To Turn From the Light
by Revaliciousness
Summary: Tokoyami watches from the clutches of the villains as Bakugo is rescued on live TV. As All Might and his fellow classmates rush to his rescue and the world rejoices. But no one comes for him. No one says his name.
1. Chapter 1: Truer Nightmares

Ash fell from the darkest sky. It caked into the tears staining his cheeks, but he could only stare straight ahead, could only look on the deep color of the sky. No moon, no stars.

It couldn't be the sky. The darkest, blackest night had never cloaked the world in this much crushing darkness.

What he could see was a deep orange glow. The barest light of a fire, of a destructive force beyond the black. It offered no hope and no path, no true light, but a simple coherency. A coherency to know just how screwed he was. Just how hopeless the situation was.

His muscles strained. Ached. Burned in thousands of painful bruises, scrapes, and scars.

He couldn't see what he was fighting, couldn't tell what force had beaten and cut and crushed him into the ground. Whatever it was had seemed to obliterate the light, had trapped him in the swirling force of uncertainty.

No defense was good enough, the power was nothing like he had ever seen. And he had never been more scared.

There was no warning. No idea of intent. No visual on the enemy, no idea if a weakness existed.

All he could do after fending it off for so long was to collapse, to fall back on the ground as his muscles turned to lead, as frustrated, pained, frightened tears cut through the dirt dusting his cheeks. His fingers dug into the earth as he choked on the air that felt stuffy and thick around him, shaking as for the first time he heard footsteps shuffling along the ground, leather soles on concrete and then grass.

He needed to run, he had to get away, but every ligament was strained to the point of snapping, every cell burned of its last degree of energy. He turned his eyes to try and see through the unbelievable darkness, to know what horror approached and he saw a figure illuminated in the fire. It was not so terribly large, but the figure lacked nothing in intimidation, it was a walking shadow which made its size suddenly so much larger as it blended into the cloak of its environment.

It billowed as it slowly walked, distorted by shadow and flame. And when it's face was given an instant of illumination he saw leather. Leather in the shape of a beak protruding from the hood.

A few more steps and a glint shone off of steel goggles.

He shook where he lay. The image was the look of a plague doctor, but in that moment the figure took the form of the reaper himself. Of death on approach.

"Please," he sobbed and struggled to scurry away, struggled to even move, "What do you want? Why are you attacking me? Who are you?"

The figure hung over him now, larger than life, darker than the pits of hell. A rattle coursed through its throat, deep, so very deep. Like his voice was a chasm. Inhuman. Perhaps made that way through distortion. Perhaps it wasn't human at all.

"You think I will believe you do not know us?"

He blinked soot from his eyes as a crack of light split the darkness. It continued to expand, the darkness showing itself for what it was. An entity. A creature all it's own. Something that had truly enveloped his surroundings and blocked out the moonshine and the glinting of the stars and the flicker of the streetlights.

He was still where he had been before, just outside of the city limits, just too far away to cry out for help. The night looked entirely the same. Save for the circle that was mulched by their fight and the dwindling flames still clinging to dim life.

The darkness, it's entity, pulled back to the figure, pulling into the man, if a man it truly was. It became one with its garb, swirled around him, cascaded over his hands like it was a pet to the still form of the leather beaked creature.

While it played over and around him, distorting him, the victim of the brutal attacks, pushed himself up as much as he could, coughed on the air, only now clearing, sobbed on the painful ache of his broken rib and wiped away the blood from his mouth as he tried to see through the flickering movement of the living darkness.

"What are-"

The figure stepped into him in a fluid movement, crouched to one knee, closing their distance and freezing its victim with fear. He could smell the leather, could hear the breath.

And suddenly, he could see him.

The darkness pulled away and the hood fell back. A black gloved hand rose to its face and peeled away the goggles. The victim's mouth fell free, shock and horror choking a sob from his chest as black feathers ruffled the creature's head, silky smooth, dark as ebony.

It was a face he never imagined to see again. A face he'd thought lost. A face he'd imagined finding joy in reuniting with.

But the red in those eyes, the attire on its body, the way his once friend had beaten him to a pulp. The way he hung over him now like prey, like a bug awaiting a shoe.

This couldn't be the same person. How could it?

"T-Toko-"

A black clothed hand took his neck in hand and he gasped out the rest of it, fresh tears bursting from his eyes in total fear and despair.

"Toko...yami?"


	2. Chapter 2: Darkest Night

There was nothing. An empty darkness that expanded a thousand miles and was contained in a single droplet. Here, there was no sound, no sight, no sense of the ground beneath his feet. There was a hollow thrum where Dark Shadow should have been, hardly a sense that he was even there with him.

The term nowhereland, the idea of being somewhere and nowhere. The feeling of drifting without aim. The hollow nature of being nothing and barely being aware of one's own body.

He had his sense of fear deeply intact, his urgency, his self blame and guilt. Those didn't abandon his sight like light and the world had.

However he much was over and over again assured, he couldn't shake the weight of being unable to protect Shoji. What he had almost done to him and Midoriya when he lost control of Dark Shadow in the forest. Nor the beat his heart had skipped when he saw that elaborate man grab Bakugo, the person they were on a mission to keep safe. The way his own voice had not formed as this endless nothing warped him into itself.

If he could comprehend a physical position in here he would be crumpled to the ground, shaking from head to toe.

He can't speak but his heart cries out for Dark Shadow, his head screamed in hopes that he would hear him, but his friend was absent, missing it seemed. Or maybe he just couldn't feel or hear him in this endless nothing. Maybe Dark Shadow was calling to him too and he simply couldn't hear it.

And like a sudden and immediate rebirth, he saw light. He was stricken by it, like a splash of cold water.

In an instant he was alert. In an instant he feels his arms and legs and body and sound bursts against his eardrums like an explosion. He sees light like the sun cut across his irises and clear in a blink.

He felt where he stood, he knew the ground beneath his feet and he blinked into what little of a face he could see, a face disrupted by a disembodied hand, gray and sickly.

Tokoyami gasped and willed himself to back away, to run. He knew of this man. He had heard tell of him. He was the leader of those villains that came after them in the woods, that sent Dark Shadow spiralling out of control, that were hunting Bakugo. The person they said had threatened Midoriya that day they had been to the mall.

He knew to fear him. To be wary of him. He knew he had to run away from him.

But his body was stiff and locked up down to his toes. He choked on his own breath and found words entirely lost.

Weights came down on his body and his coherency faded. He could feel himself slipping away from consciousness, like what had warped him and released him had shocked his body in such a way it was shutting down in response.

This quirk that had grabbed and compressed him. It was not meant to be used on people.

Tokoyami felt his knees buckle and his last real thoughts were to his companion. His hand went out and his heart hung to the sight of a shadow wrapping over it. Dark Shadow was there, but he seemed weak...he said nothing.

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami cried weakly to the creature as he fell completely to the ground, head hitting wooden floorboards.

The shadow pulled away and suddenly he couldn't feel Dark Shadow anymore again. But Tokoyami could barely feel anything. His conscious mind was leaving him, no matter how desperate and panicked, how fearful and remorseful.

Above him in the last shred of awakening he could hear the scratchy voice of his assailant, of the scraggly man with the bloodshot eyes and twisted hands.

"Send this one to him," he said to a figure whose face was a black and purple vortex, "I fear this one is not like Bakugo Katsuki. He may be too rigid to see our truths. Let him take his quirk and turn that power to good use."

A frigid spike strikes Tokoyami's heart as his eyes drift back and his last grip on reality passes away. He doesn't have the ability to think on it, on the meaning of the words, but he doesn't have to to know that it's his life that is compromised...that it's Dark Shadow's life.

The last thing he hears besides the pulsing of his heart in his ears is the deep voice of the man made of smoke and shadow.

"Hmm. A shame. As one of us he could have rained destruction like no other…"

His next sense was pain. It wracked like fire through his body, but he couldn't move more than an inch. He thrashed against restraints that cut deep into his skin and when his eyes burst open he gasped.

Not because of the pain. Not because of the vulnerable position of his limbs and neck fastened to a table. Not because of the scene of horror surrounding him, of brains in tubs...of what he instantly recognized as Nomus...as the nearly unbeatable creatures that the villain Tomura had in his possession, that he had been told were once human made monster.

It was not even entirely because of the man, so large, so forboding, face covered and staring him down like he was nothing. But because Dark Shadow was there, somehow conscious before he was, standing between Tokoyami and the man. Because the creature was using the dark ambiance of its surroundings to expand its size and strength and stubbornly hover over Tokoyami in protection.

"You will not touch him!" the creature demanded in a voice as deep and dark as its shadowy form.

"The creature has a mind of its own then," The man said in amusement, "You have a unique quirk Tokoyami...if a quirk this can even be called."

Tokoyami swallowed and Dark Shadow picked up on the sound, turning its birdlike, shadowy head back to its companion, yellow eyes widened.

"You're awake!" Dark Shadow said in relief, but urgency caking his voice.

Tokoyami was still groggy and shifted slowly, though his heart pounded in his chest.

"Dark Shadow," he said slowly.

"Interesting," The man continued to observe without fear, without any apparent concern, "An animorph quirk, the face of a bird, yet your powers come from a monster. Even if one is useless, it is rare to be blessed by a multitude of quirks. I am one of those few as well, though I created my blessing rather than relying on fate."

Dark Shadow seemed to grow a bit larger in response to the man talking, but held his defensive ground over Tokoyami still coming to and tied down.

"Who are you?" Tokoyami spat with as much confidence as he could.

The man showed no such power so far. He wore a suit and covered his face, metal plating and tubing around where his neck should be, which was off putting in and of itself. But it still said nothing of who this man was. Why he showed no fear in the face of Dark Shadow.

"I am the one known as All For One," the verbato of his tone shook Tokoyami to his core, "Perhaps better to be known as the one who will end All Might. But as far as you are concerned young Tokoyami, I shall either be your master or executioner. That decision is on your shoulders."

"I will not give you my loyalty if that's what you desire," Tokoyami clenched his fists in defiance, "I will not call you master."

"Then it is death," All For One shrugged.

"You will execute no one today, supposed nemesis of All Might!" Dark Shadow growled and poised himself for combat.

"You are not one to be restrained, are you creature?" All For One flexed his hand, "But the entire world saw the Sports Festival, saw your weakness. I could fight you right now with one hand and defeat you, but I have no time to play games."

On his last word the sound of a large switch flipping hit the air and light burst through the building, illuminating so bright that Tokoyami had to pinch his eyes closed in fear of going blind. He jerked against his restraints when he heard Dark Shadow make a pained sound and could feel his form shrink.

Dark Shadow retreated. Retreated back inside of him, cutting off his voice, cutting off the sense of his presence. Leaving Tokoyami so terribly alone.

But not alone. No...All For One remained. Tokoyami couldn't see him now, but he could feel him moving closer, could feel the absolute size of him hang over his restrained form.

And the next thing he knew once again was unabashed pain.

Without sight or Dark Shadow to ground him it was all just ethereal and amorphous. The feeling was like someone was trying to suck out his inside with a powerful vacuum, but that there was nothing for it to pull out. Like he was husk being drained or every last living particle.

He screamed. What else could he do?

When the pain became too much and his head felt like swollen lead he lost consciousness again. It was all his body could do to keep his sanity. It was its very last resort.

In his dreamless black out there was nothing but a desperation. Somehow that sense of urgency, that panicked fear transgressed past his waking mind and dove endlessly through murky subconscious thought. The fear for his life, but even greater, his fear for Dark Shadow.

He couldn't feel him again. How did he keep drawing away like this? Why?

Tokoyami needed him. Needed his power!

But he could feel the fear ebbing off of Dark Shadow as he had faced down that stonelike man, the man claiming that he could end All Might, the most powerful hero the world had ever known. He had rarely known Dark Shadow to fear.

He feared Bakugo's explosions, Todoroki's fire. But not in the way that he trembled at the very sight. In the way that he had no choice but to back down in the light of its presence.

Dark Shadow had stood boldly and Tokoyami had been too delirious to truly understand until he was wrapped in the safety of his internal mind, but the creature was truly scared. Scared for Tokoyami and woefully uncertain of what to do. Dark Shadow knew how to fight, would fight, was prepared to fight. His abyssal body grew and drew on the power of the shadows to stand guard over its companion, but even knowing his own monumental power, the creature had looked on the calm form of All For One with terror.

It was no wonder that upon the blinding cascade of light Dark Shadow had retreated as far as he could go. But it didn't stop Tokoyami's desperate cry to reach him, to draw him back out.

_Dark Shadow! Come back! Don't leave me alone with him! _

But only silence answered.

And that was all that ever answered. Fear and silence captivated his dreams between awaking to unfathomable agony. And every time he found consciousness he cried out for Dark Shadow again.

But he wouldn't hear his deep voice again for a long time.


	3. Chapter 3: Truth Be Told

Everytime Tokoyami woke up again he was still blinded. The relentless light would not give, would not dim. He wasn't even in the same place anymore. The restraints were gone, he could feel that. The surface where he lay wasn't a hard tabletop anymore, but a pliant cot.

He sat up and felt every single muscle in his body tremble and almost give. His feet dropped over the side and found hard floor against his shoes. His arms went out, weak and unsteady to his surroundings, looking for a sign of anything solid around him. It was mostly open space, but he traced out four walls and finally a door that wouldn't give. Latched from the outside.

His fist pounded against the hard steel surface, but there was no response. It didn't stop him. He persisted and beat his fist against the door until he could feel the welts of the bruises on the top of his hands swelling. And even then he kept it up until they were too numb to feel the pain of it anymore.

"Dark Shadow are you there?" he called out into the endless white, which was all that his open eyes could see. "Dark Shadow please answer me!"

Silence remained like a constant companion.

Dark Shadow was still inside of him, he knew it, he could tell. He had never lived a waking moment in his life without that creature and if it was suddenly ripped away from him physically it was something he would know. He couldn't feel him, but there was no emptiness, nothing that said he was gone, just that he was unresponsive right now.

"I know the light hurts," Tokoyami desperately tried to coax him, voice shaking as his fists continued to beat the door, "But I need your help. If you stay inside they may kill us both."

Even while his fists slammed into the steel surface he heard something unlatch and felt the door push in. He jumped back in response, posing himself with raised fists to fight whoever had stepped inside, blinking hard against the light to get even an outline.

And in a snap the light shut off, turned to near black. But to Tokoyami it might as well have been a blindfold. Nothing but spots and dark red in his vision.

"Who goes there?" he called out to the now darkness.

"Relax Tokoyami," said a very unrelaxing voice, scratchy and ragged.

Tokoyami hissed and backed another step away. He recognized it. The last time he'd heard it...damn, was that a few days ago now...more? That voice had said...something about letting someone take his quirk…

It was Shigaraki Tomura's voice. The man with the dismembered hands all over his body. That ghoulish, pale man who led the League. Why was he back?

The things he'd said that day ran through Tokoyami's mind, something about him seeing truths. Something about Bakugo. Wait-

"You!" Tokoyami sucked in air angrily, backing another step away, internally begging Dark Shadow to show himself, to stop his hiding now that the lights were out. He may have been too weak still. "Where am I? What have you done with Bakugo?"

"I asked you to relax, my friend," Tomura hummed in a disgustingly friendly tone, "We don't mean you any further harm."

"Then what was that man doing to me...All For One...and why am I blinded?" Tokoyami challenged feeling the back of his legs hit the cot.

He heard movement in the room and he jerked to face towards it, a flicker of blue finally cutting through his disjointed vision along with a sense of heat cascading over the air.

"The lights are to keep your creature under control," Tomura said, "It broke Moonfish like a twig, defeated one of our most dangerous assets with such small effort...you'll forgive my caution."

"I will forgive nothing while I'm being held against my will!" Tokoyami bit, putting all his confidence into his voice since it was the only weapon he had as long as Dark Shadow remained absent and his eyes remained blotted.

"You are our guest, not our prisoner," Tomura chuckled, "I just ask that you consider what I have to say."

Tokoyami's eyes were on the blue, trying to get it into focus, hoping beyond hope that it meant something good, but just praying truly that it would encourage his sight to come back enough for him to defend himself. He didn't trust anything that was about to come out of this mans mouth and still couldn't grasp why he was now talking to him in the first place.

What had All For One even done to him? Tomura said something about taking his quirk, but Tokoyami knew Dark Shadow to still be there so had he changed his mind? Did Tomura now believe him capable of turning to his side? Of hearing his pitch and considering it seriously?

But with Dark Shadow still out of the game and himself at a severe disadvantage it made more sense to humor his captors than pick a fight at the moment. He didn't know how many people were even in the room. He could be surrounded for all he knew.

"Say your peace then, villain," Tokoyami's words were like venom.

"Villain you say?" Tomura mused, "What makes me a villain compared to any other? What makes you or All Might or anyone else a hero?"

The blue light was growing slightly more coherent, there were fewer red dots. Tokoyami was hopeful, maybe he was getting somewhere.

"If you cannot see how clearly your actions are those of villains than its your sanity I question," Tokoyami replied, "You and your villains attacked a high school, threatened the lives of children and civilians alike. That is what makes you a villain. Bringing harm to innocent people is more than enough."

"And your heroes don't put civilians in harm's way to reach their goals?" Tomura scoffed, "Your so called heroes protect innocent lives for one reason, to protect themselves. They do their work for the glory, the fame, the money it puts in their pockets. They pay attention only to what will coat their egos the most. It if means protecting a civilian or pushing one into traffic, it does not matter to them."

"You know nothing of heroes!" Tokoyami shouted and stifled a gasp that he was able to start making out outlines of those who occupied the room. There were two and the blue light was coming from one of them.

"Do I not?" Tomura sounded amused, "Are you curious of what became of Bakugo?"

Tokoyami went stiff, a chill crawling very slowly over his spine.

"What have you done?"

There was something displeased in Tomura's tone and the blue light got a bit closer, causing Tokoyami to startle as he realized that the light was a flame set in the palm of a man's hand. It danced with a life of its one in the open palm, not affecting its holder in the least though Tokoyami could feel how blistering hot it was. It was like Todoroki's but blue and hotter, so much hotter and far more controlled. His eyes were clear enough to see that now.

It's user was nothing like Todoroki though. His skin was stitched all over, with darker patches of skin looking almost like leather attached to a clear complexion. His head was crowned with dark black hair, but his eyes were crystal blue. That at least was like Todoroki, or at least one of his eyes.

He was tall too and towered over Tokoyami, reaching out with the hand that was not aflame to Tokoyami's arm. He tried to shake him off, but he grabbed the bird headed boy and put his blue flame close to Tokoyami's face, making him look away and hiss at the harsh heat.

"Act with caution," the man with the fire warned, "If your friend tries to hurt either of us I won't hesitate to burn the feathers off your face."

The warning felt unnecessary. Dark Shadow had not even stirred, not given even an inkling that he was coming to Tokoyami's aid. But Tokoyami wasn't going to make that known, it didn't benefit him to let these men know that they had him at a severe disadvantage. He simply bared his teeth and let the man pulled him across the room.

He could truly see Tomura now and he was as unpleasant to look at as ever. He seemed to be young, but his skin seemed weathered and the white of his hair made him feel either aged or crazed with the latter reigning supreme at the time. From what he could see of his covered face his lips looked chapped and his eyes darkly rimmed. He made Tokoyami sick just to look at, with his arms hanging limply at his sides and his shoulders hunched forward.

Tokoyami did behave cautiously as Tomura lead the way and the other man guided Tokoyami out of the room to an open area, the body of what appeared to be a warehouse. It was full of other villains who seemed frustrated and disheartened, throwing only snears in the direction of their prisoner.

"Bakugo isn't here anymore," Tomura jarred Tokoyami with his casual words, grabbing a remote to a small TV off to the side of the room. He clicked it on and a news broadcast came up onto the screen, it displayed the word "LIVE" in the corner, but the broadcast wasn't from that day it was reporters talking about events from the previous night.

"Where-?"

Tomura turned up the volume and huffed.

"The young hero in training, Bakugo Katsuki was returned home safely after the rescue operation lead by our very own pro heroes, most notably All Might himself who sacrificed it all to seal a victory against the villains last night…"

Tokoyami's eyes widened.

"He was rescued?"

The news broadcast continued and the teary eyed spokeswoman went on to detail the state All Might was left in after the fight, his retirement, the powerful defeat of...All For One? The man in that footage...that was the man who'd been hurting him...the one so unafraid of Dark Shadow.

Only a few seconds of watching him fight All Might put it into perspective why he'd been so calm. All For One had not exaggerated his powers in the slightest. He could truly have crushed them both in moments.

Whenever they finished praising All Might they went back to lauding the bravery of the boy that had been captured and how consoled UA was that the incident had ended without any casualties.

It was over. That's what they were saying.

Tokoyami swallowed hard at the TV and turned a distressed eye to Tomura and then back to the man still gripping his arm and hovering that blue flame too close for comfort.

Tomura hummed again. "Everything wrapped up. Villain defeated. Heroes praised. Prisoners rescued. Do you agree that there's something missing in those statements?"

"What about…"

"What about you?" Tomura filled in.

"Looks like they forgot somebody," A girl's voice jumped in with a pitchy giggle, before a head of blonde hair and crossed arms plopped on top of the TV.

"This is a lie!" Tokoyami insisted.

The girl flashed fang-like teeth and cocked her head.

"Lies are fun, but this is way better," she laughed, "I love that look on your face. It looks like pain."

"Go sit down, Toga," Tomura ordered.

She tried to complain, but he insisted and she begrudgingly fell back into her seat and twirled a knife in her hands.

"You're saying to me that they aren't even looking for me?" Tokoyami turned his eye to Tomura venomously.

"That you aren't relevant enough to be of concern to the big important heroes?" Tomura continued the thought, "Yes. See how they ignore you for the people they deem of real importance? You didn't win the sport's festival. No one cares about third place."

"I won't believe that!" Tokoyami shouted, "They wouldn't abandon me!"

"Oh but they already have," Tomura shut the TV off, "No one is coming for you, Tokoyami. If you don't believe me then wait around. I'm very patient. Check the news every day. You will see no mention and no one will come busting down my door in hopes of finding you."

Tokoyami jerked out of the fire man's hold and willed with every part of his being for Dark Shadow to emerge, finding infinite frustration when the blue flame kicked up hotter and the very small stirring Tokoyami felt settled as fast as it came. Was Dark Shadow afraid? So afraid that he wouldn't even try to protect them?

Tomura fearlessly stepped in front of him and locked his red eyes with Tokoyami's.

"I'm trying to tell you that the heroes you look up to are fools, Tokoyami," Tomura spat, "That they are complete idiots to not come for you. They don't have a single clue what they have. They laud the son of that hero who should be called a villain. They look at Bakugo as the most powerful and full of potential when he can't even manage his temper. All while you...as strong as them both...stronger even, have hardly been acknowledged. Moonfish faced both of them and yet you are the one who defeated him. Why is that?"

He hated how every word grated over him, how it seemed to scrape against some internal sore spots he didn't even know he had. But mostly it just heated his temper towards Tomura. A temper that usually would have stirred Dark Shadow to action, but that flame was bright and close.

"You already know the weakness of my quirk," Tokoyami fumed, "You know why I lost to Bakugo and Todoroki. You use the same thing against me now and tell me I'm more powerful than them when both of their powers quell mine so easily."

"But why were you able to defeat Moonfish?" Tomura pressed, "What made that fight different?"

The anger and frustration and memory of that night had Tokoyami shaking where he stood, rage filled tears hitting the corners of his eyes.

"Because I lost control!" Tokoyami shouted, "Because Dark Shadow took over and became something I couldn't handle anymore."

Tomura lifted his hands and raised his voice in excitement. "Because you were allowed to reach your full potential!"

Tokoyami was taken aback and shook his head. "No-"

"Yes," Tomura insisted, "The heroes have been telling you that you must learn to control the beast, haven't they?"

Tokoyami ground his teeth, but said nothing.

"They would have told you that you have to keep your powers in a tight grasp," Tomura continued, "That what happened in the forest was wrong, that you had done something wrong, but look what you were able to do."

"But...I was so...I was helpless to him," Tokoyami said more to himself than to Tomura, "He could have killed my friends and I was powerless to do anything."

"Because you were taught wrong," Tomura's voice was calm, "Because instead of controlling the beast you should have been learning to work in tandem with it. To coordinate with the wild creature rather than subduing it. But the heroes don't want that...they would fear your true potential. They wouldn't be able to control you…"

Tokoyami shook his head defiantly. Tomura was wrong. He had to be. They were villains. They concocted lies for a living.

He wasn't forgotten and his training wasn't wrong.

"We want to see you reach your full potential," Tomura went on, "We don't want you as our prisoner, but as part of our family...as the strongest link."

Tokoyami shivered and turned a spiteful eye up to the leader of the League of Villains.

"Then why did you send me to that man to take away my quirk?" he asked, "You didn't think me so valuable then."

Tomura hesitated a moment, but was smooth in his voice when he responded.

"My master was unable to take your quirk from you," he said, "I've never seen him fail before. But there is no quirk like yours. The creature is its own entity and it will not leave you. His failure to separate Dark Shadow from you only brought to perspective how truly powerful and valuable you are."

Tokoyami stared at his hands, disbelief painting his face.

"What does that mean?" The question was not necessarily directed at Tomura. What did it mean that All For One couldn't take his quirk, couldn't separate Dark Shadow from him? Truthfully he couldn't help the flutter of pride inside of him. A man who could take quirks...a man strong enough to give All Might a fight that supposedly ended his career wasn't able to take his away.

"Think about it," Tomura sighed, "I have plenty of time...looks like you will too."

Before any other protest could be made the heat of blue fire came dangerously close to Tokoyami's face and he was pulled forcefully away from the open room.

With every dread and fear leaping into Tokoyami's throat he found himself thrown back into the cell of a room he had woken up in before, knees and hands hitting the floor. Whatever All For One had put him through had his body still so weakened that he couldn't even move quickly to look back over his shoulder.

The man with blue fire stayed staring a moment longer, a strange smile on his face that pulled up into his eyes that matched well with the color of his flames. It sent a chill running through Tokoyami and he tried to force Dark Shadow to find some life within him, hoping that the short distance might be enough for Dark Shadow to emerge.

But there was no chance, the door slammed closed and the blinding white of penetrating light stabbed into his eyes like spears. This time he threw his the hood of his hoodie over his head and tried to cover his face as much as possible.

His beak poked out, but the sealed tightness of over his eyes and the cover of the hood protected his eyes for the most part. At least for a short while.

The sheer desperation he felt, the fears that prodded his mind and repeated Tomura's accusations over and over, through the following endless hours and persistent burning, painful light, drove him to beating his fists against the floor and ripping at the seam of his hood. His head started to hurt so badly for how hard he pinched his eyes, eventually he had no choice but to take the sting of the brightness instead.

All the while he revoked Tomura again and again. Nothing he could say could convince him that his friends had turned their backs on him. Midoriya had never abandoned a person in his life. Iida would find it against his every principle to leave a man behind. Shoji was his closest friend and even Bakugo with all of his horrible attitude wouldn't have made that escape and not demanded they go back for Tokoyami.

But the date on the TV showed him how much time had passed already, unless that too was somehow a lie. If anything Tomura had shown him was correct than he'd been in their hands for days, and no one seemed to even consider that he was missing, and worst of all...the world had lost All Might.

No! That one he couldn't truly believe. And All Might especially wouldn't abandon him. He wasn't just their teacher, he was the symbol of peace and justice in the world. He wouldn't leave one of his students to die or even to suffer.

Tokoyami would hold onto those hopes. Hold on that it was only a matter of time and patience and that Tomura was only bluffing.

In this prison of light he would wait. Wait for rescue or wait for Dark Shadow to brave the environment and fight for his freedom.

He just had to wait.


	4. Chapter 4: When Patience Runs Out

He grew to know his world by sound. By feel. By smell. He learned his captors names when they came to fill his ears with their propaganda and disheartenment. Not that all of them spoke, but they were no less known to him because of it.

The one with blue fire was called Dabi, a name meaning "cremation" rather befittingly, considering how hot his flames burned. He never really said much, but Tokoyami feared him most of all. That calm exterior was sure to snap at any given moment and he waited for a gust of blue flame to cut through the fuzzy blur of his fractured sight and leave him in an agonizingly slow death.

The girl with some horrible fixation on seeing others in pain was Himiko Toga, unruly and young. No older than himself even. Her voice grated against his skin worse than any other, something psychotic in the very tone of it.

Atsuhiro Sako he was already familiar with and stayed as far away from as possible if ever he attempted to grace Tokoyami with his presence. He was the villain known as Mr. Compress and just hearing his voice drug Tokoyami's mind back into the horrible nowhere land he'd been trapped in upon capture. If he got close enough to lay a hand on Tokoyami he'd find a way to rip it off rather than experience being compressed again.

The one called Twice was unique in most senses, speaking back and forth like he was having an entire conversation all on his own, never requiring Tokoyami or any of his villain companion's input to hold the entire back and forth together. Though however seemingly crazy, schizophrenic even, he came off, he somehow also seemed the kindest, the one who might pass through the cell door simply to chat, rather than to barrage his ears with thoughts of failure and abandonment or with flicks of fire to burn and hurt him.

Shigaraki Tomura was persistent, trying every day to convince Tokoyami that he wanted only his allegiance, that he meant no harm to him or Dark Shadow. He spoke on and on in praise of Tokoyami, but the teen remained silent, refusing to give responses anymore.

He sat on the cot, back to the wall and arms folded over his chest, still as death whenever someone would come in. The lights would dim, but Tokoyami never managed to get through to Dark Shadow in those periods of time and never seemed to recover his sight entirely before the radiant brightness returned.

In the eyes of the villains he was stubborn, calm, still and unphased. But when the door closed he twisted his hands in the feathers on his head, shaking where he sat, begging Dark Shadow to just say something. He just didn't want to be alone anymore.

It had been days. Endless, long, dreadful days.

They would leave a radio playing sometimes for a few hours, just so he could hear the outside world for a bit, know the day and time, know how long he'd been there. But mostly for him to know that nothing was being said about him, that the outside world refused to acknowledge or refused to care that he was missing, captured or hurt.

He didn't show any of it to his captors, but every hour that passed wore on Tokoyami like he was being scraped forcefully over concrete. In the absence of villains tormenting him and the chattering of a radio, there was such complete silence like he had never known.

For as long as he could remember he had never truly been alone in his life. If he needed to hear a voice, there would be a voice there. And even in silence he could always feel Dark Shadow at least in those days, feel life and movement, however dark and volatile it was.

There was no frustration to compare with having that so wrenched from his hands.

Tokoyami started referring to Dark Shadows stillness as a hybernation. Like an animal in the harsh cold, he simply couldn't survive in the brutal environment if he was active or even showed his face. He was curled up inside, asleep, dead to the world until he could feel the cold blanket of darkness fall over him again.

And all the while Tokoyami was left to fend for himself, waiting blind and afraid in a relentless sea of light for the next time one of those villains would try to convince him to give up hope and join them.

The worst part was that Tokoyami was actually starting to believe it. It had been a full week since the attack in the forest and he was still in this same room, wearing the same jeans and hoodie he had been in the night they'd taken him, as powerless as a quirkless child, without even his personal demons to comfort him.

But no matter how disheartened, how hard it was to sit in the agony of waiting, he didn't feel even an ounce of new respect or loyalty towards his captors. They were just as much the villains as they had been before. The only difference was that the heroes were seeming less heroic and his friends less like friends.

His hatred towards them didn't quite reach face until Tomura's supposedly great patience wore thin one day. The lights were dimmed enough for some form of shape to return to Tokoyami's vision, though unclear and slow in even that small recovery. He'd have been deeply worried, panicked even over what this much exposure was doing to his eyes if he hadn't been so pained by the sheer abandonment masking his situation. If he hadn't been so much more deeply worried about so many other things at the time.

Tomura leaned casually against one wall while the shapes of Dabi and Toga started to become clear enough to differentiate. The girl seemed unable to sit still while playing with the knife that Tokoyami could hear spinning around in her hand. Dabi seemed similarly impatient, though portrayed it very differently, blue light appearing and disappearing as his fire kept igniting and going out like a fidgety habit.

Tokoyami sat arms crossed as usual, legs hanging over the side of the cot and back settled into the wall behind him, acting like he was entirely indifferent to their presence. He could sense the agitation in the room, ebbing off of Tomura more than anyone. His fingers scratched at his neck like having skin on his body was some sort of intrusion and a chill filtered down Tokoyami's spine to listen to the scrape of his nails against his pale skin.

"I expected Bakugo to be stubborn and willful, but you've surprised me Tokoyami," Tomura said, no praise in his tone, "Reason doesn't seem to reach you like I thought it would. Perhaps I've relied too much on your rationality. I forget you're just a child and teenagers are bred not to listen to practical thought."

Tokoyami's nails dug into his arms, swallowing thickly, but conveying none of his apprehension to where his captors could see.

"I've been dealing with you all wrong," Tomura laughed to himself, pushing away from the wall, "You're the type that feeds off of angst and rebellion. I sound like some sort of authority so of course you'd rebel…but...maybe we can appeal to another of your interests."

Tokoyami looked at them hard, biting his cheek that it was still so hard to even make out the physical structure of the people in front of him. He gave them his most defiant look though, baring his teeth.

"Go ahead, Toga."

Tokoyami saw movement, stood to avoid it, but couldn't react fast enough and couldn't see the person clear enough to know what was happening. He felt his back hit the wall and a stinging heat in the side of his neck.

His arms went up to deflect, but with a swipe of Toga's hand he was hissing on fresh cuts in both arms, already dripping blood. He heard her giggling and felt her knee crash into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

He bit on the pain as Toga grabbed one of his hands and pressed it to the wall beside his head with bubbly gushings falling from her mouth.

"I'm liking you more and more Fumikage-chan," she mused as her blade dug into the skin of his palm and started to etch out a meaningless symbol.

Tears stung the corners of his eyes, unable to quell them as his free hand tried to push her away. But he was so weakened. Even when they offered food he didn't eat. He had barely even contemplated sleep, especially with the vibrant ache in his head that never seemed to go away and the dreadful crushing weight of total abandonment.

Now he couldn't even fend off this girl. But even at full strength he may have struggled with her. She was stronger than she looked and more brutal than her yellow pigtails let on either.

Tokoyami choked on the pain of having his skin carved up and he shuddered when her tongue licked over the bleeding hand before releasing him and letting him drop to the floor in a crouch, holding his injuries close.

"Just like Stain," she said to herself as she smacked her lips on the taste of his blood and turned her knife in the light to admire the red of it.

"Does that make things feel more at home?" Tomura taunted as Tokoyami squeezed his wounds to stop the bleeding, "Don't you enjoy a nice dose of pain and angst?"

Tokoyami's body shook. "You're insane."

"You say that because you don't understand," Tomura spat, "I'll make you understand."

Blue light came at him and he cowered. He hated himself for doing so, hated that he was so weakened and reduced that his first action was not a counterattack. Hated that he tried to hide his head behind bloodied arms and even more that it was entirely futile.

He was pulled to his feet, but it was not some small girl this time, but the towering form of a stitched, dark haired man. Of Dabi. Flame licked at the side of his head and he could smell it singe his feathers. He tried to push Dabi away, but like before he could do very little, especially while already bleeding and in pain.

The red choker he wore around his neck was ripped away, something he rarely ever removed and felt fingers clench around his throat.

He gasped as his air was stifled and his red eyes blew wide and panicked when a spark of heat ignited against his skin. Tokoyami could make out the vibrant blue of Dabi's eyes piercing through the fog of his vision, just because he was screaming and thrashing. Dabi wasn't even choking him anymore, just burning him. The tender pale skin of his neck sizzled under the unholy touch and even in the dimmed lights, Tokoyami saw white.

He'd never felt a pain like that before and his body didn't know how to handle it, falling into shock and slumping against the wall. As a last means of defense Tokoyami passed out, his mind saving itself from the gut wrenching sensation by shutting down.

Tokoyami woke up hours later to a stronger blindness than he'd known before and the brutal sting of fresh wounds and fresh burns having been left unattended. There was a stench in the air of burnt flesh and Tokoyami dry heaved on the reality that it was his own that he was smelling. There was nothing on his stomach to vomit up, but when he placed his hand on the floor to prop himself back up, he set it into a puddle of what was certainly blood. He could smell the iron. It had to be.

The carved up hand was strangely numb, or maybe he just couldn't even think about that pain when his neck was inflamed like cooked meat.

He lifted his bloodied hand to touch his neck and shuddered and almost vomited again to feel the warping of the skin under his fingers, the heat radiating with every ebb of pain. It was bad. Horrible. The skin felt like it had been melted and dried back extremely fast.

And yet it felt careful. How easily could those inferno hands have burned right through his windpipe or the strength of them crushed his neck? And yet all that had been damaged was the skin, not the meat beneath it.

That didn't make it any easier or less agonizing to experience. If anything it was worse. Because it meant that they wouldn't kill him, but they were willing to make his existence a living hell. Willing to let him suffer in any way they might dream up.

They'd come in, cut and burned him and then left him to lay in a pool of his own blood.

A sob choked him and stung his throat when the burned skin flexed.

Why hadn't they just killed him? He'd made it obvious he'd never join them and there was no way this new tactic would seek to change his mind. So why? Was it just fun for them now?

There was a wracked burn in his chest a sort of pain that even the agony of his burned neck couldn't compare to.

The feeling that he hated so much that he'd woken up at all. The feeling that he'd rather be dead than live another second in this hell. Left to suffer by the people he thought cared about him. Left to awake to nothing but pain. And truly nothing else. He couldn't even see the hand in front of his face.

His chest tightened as he wept through his panic, no longer hoping or praying for some rescue, just begging for an end. A permanent out. That the next time they came at him, they'd aim the knife for his heart instead.

He couldn't do this anymore.


	5. Chapter 5: Fires and Frying Pans

There was blood in the air that day and for once it wasn't his own.

Tokoyami could barely move anymore, to move was to stir his wounds and he couldn't bare it, not after Dabi came back later that day to add injury to injury. Not after a flesh melting handprint was left against his forearm.

He expected this was all his future was. Becoming an ever growing burn and open wound on two legs until the shock of it all stopped his heart and let him know peace again.

But that day changed things in ways he was never expecting.

There was a lot of noise outside of the walls of that room, harsh, violent noises. It was a fight.

It was the first thing to make him leap off of the cot in ages, the pain drowned by adrenaline and anxiousness as he stumbled to the door and rapped his fist against it. A sense of hope was in his heart that he hadn't known for so long and his hoarse, barely audible voice called out hoping to catch the attention of whoever was there.

The heroes had finally come it seemed. They were finally going to end Tomura and his League of Villains and ultimately rescue him. There were tears in his eyes again, chest heavy.

They hadn't forgotten him! His friends, the heroes, somebody had finally come for him, come to end this.

Though weak he kept pounding against the door even after there was silence outside, heart racing hoping that it meant the villains were defeated and not the other way around. But he retained heart, hoping that the silence would just bring attention to the noise he was making, raising his low voice so that someone might hear.

And sure enough he heard voices and they didn't sound like the ones he'd grown to know of the villains. He really was saved.

He shuffled back when he heard the door handle jimmying and felt his heart leap into his throat when it skid open and the lights shut down.

"What the hell?"

Tokoyami didn't recognize the voice but it sounded like an adult male, lightly distorted, perhaps by a mask, which felt like a good sign that it might be a hero. He had no idea who he was, but simply that it wasn't one of Tomura's villains and that was all Tokoyami needed to know to wash over in relief, which effectively shut down the adrenaline keeping him going.

Pain coursed back over him like a shovel in his face and his knees buckled from weakness. He felt hands on him steadying him and lifting him back to his feet, putting his shoulder under Tokoyami's arm to support him.

They stumbled out of the room, Tokoyami unable to even speak, just breath ragged and harsh on the searing pains, trusting that no matter where he was being led it was better than here.

He felt open air and gravel underneath his feet, the chirping of crickets in the night air telling him they'd made it out. But then they stopped on another slightly distorted male voice.

"Who is that?" he asked.

He felt the man supporting him shake his head.

"No clue, just a kid, but it looks like he was their prisoner," the one who'd found him said.

There was intrigued hum in the other man's voice and Tokoyami wished he could see him, wished he knew what was going on. But the tone of their voice and overall confusion didn't scream heroes on a rescue mission. They didn't know who he was or why he was even there and it made Tokoyami's heart drop deep into his chest.

They may have pulled him out of there, but they hadn't come here with the intention of rescuing him.

"What do you want to do with him?" the man holding him up said, spiking concern in Tokoyami for his position among whoever these people were.

"I'm curious," the more leaderly of them mused, "We'll take him with us, see what the boss thinks. The enemy of my enemy as they say…"

Tokoyami was too disoriented by pain, fear, and confusion to follow what happened next. He was lead into a vehicle and they drove for a while. When they stopped a few arms lifted him and practically carried him back indoors. He could hardly keep his head up even if he could see.

He slipped in and out of consciousness a few times, but when he was awake the surface he was on felt comfortable, soft. There were hands on him now and then, but he could feel cloth sealing over his hand and something cool against the skin of his neck and arm.

His injuries were being tended to, but that's all he really knew. There was an IV drip in his arm and as much as he could be, he was oddly comfortable.

Maybe he was in a hospital. That seemed the most likely option. But it was very quiet for a hospital.

When he finally woke up and wasn't drifting somewhere between dream and reality, his chest pounded with frustration. With eyes wide open, he could barely capture the shapes in front of him.

Tokoyami tried to sit up but felt a little woozy, almost collapsing back as soon as he'd lifted himself.

"Finally back to the land of the living," an amused voice huffed into the darkness that was Tokoyami's sight.

The pain was a good bit duller now and he could feel something wrapped around his neck and bandages covering his other injuries. They seemed professionally done, which drew out his curiosity further.

Tokoyami parted his beak to speak, to ask where he was, to ask who was there, but his throat was incredibly dry. He made a hoarse sound and coughed.

He made out a form close by and felt a glass come into his hands. He flinched away, but could feel how cold it was and the heaviness of the liquid inside. Perhaps he should have been more cautious about what he took from strangers after all the time he'd spent in the hands of villains, but he was desperate and downed it fast.

It almost hurt, but the water was extremely refreshing at the same time. He gasped when it was finished and swallowed hard, trying to get his voice back.

"Don't rush it, kid, you're pretty banged up," the voice was the same as the one that had found him in the villain's clutches, still somewhat distorted.

Tokoyami just nodded and clenched his fists in frustration, knowing the man was right.

He could hear the door opening and felt the man next to him straighten. He gulped nervously and Tokoyami frowned, wondering what about the newcomer had his savior in such a state.

"You know how I feel about my men taking things into their own hands," The voice sent a chill down Tokoyami's spine with its harsh authority.

A sense of confidence returned to his savior's voice. "I don't take back what I did. I'll take the consequences, boss, but I stand by it. Those villains are just in the way and we shouldn't be trying to gain their allegiance. They need to be put down like the scum they are."

"Not your decision to make," the boss said.

Tokoyami shifted away from what he was hearing, heart in throat. This dynamic was disconcerting. These were definitely not heroes.

"You'll see," the man demanded, "You'll see I'm right."

"And the boy? Why did you bring him here?" the boss was stepping into the room.

"We found him in Shigaraki's base," the man explained, "I thought if he was their prisoner he must be their enemy. He must be of some use to us then."

There was a displeased groan and the shifting of fabric.

"You pathetic fool," the boss spat, "That is a hero in training. A UA student. You brought the enemy into our home."

The man who'd saved Tokoyami gasped and the teenager scurried back, accidentally ripping the IV free from his arm as he dropped on the other side of the bed on weak legs that half buckled under him. He supported himself on the side of the bed and tried to push himself back up straight, the two men just slow blotches in his red eyes.

These people were enemies of heroes. He would have to defend himself. He had to run.

After so long with Dark Shadow so unresponsive, he didn't even consider him anymore, determined that no matter what, he'd have to fend for himself.

"I...I didn't know!" the man shouted, desperately.

Tokoyami distinctly saw an unreal spray of red gush across his sight and there was a thud. A body hitting the floor. What was left of a body.

The teen shoved himself away, stumbling back on shaky legs until he fell back on his ass, breath quick and bandaged arms raised to protect himself. He could hear the boss stepping towards him, coming around the bed, in no real hurry, like he was drawing it out.

"Don't…" Tokoyami barely choked out.

The boss was hovering over him now and Tokoyami's dull eyes were wide, shaking to think what he could even do. He could barely even stand.

Then a swatch of black disrupted his sight. A tear stung Tokoyami's eyes when he heard that dark, deep voice.

"Step away or I will destroy you!"

Dark Shadow was there. He was back. Awoken from his hybernation.

The boss just huffed as Dark Shadow lunged. All Tokoyami saw was blurs of shape and the clattering sounds of exertion and destruction of the environment.

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami finally managed to cry out in relief and fear.

He couldn't see what was happening, but he knew it was a grapple, a struggle between the man and the creature.

When suddenly it went still and quiet, he felt Dark Shadow pull back close to him, wrap against his shoulder, cloak him like a blanket of protection. There was shuffling and a small groan.

"Your creature is challenging, young hero," the boss huffed, "My quirk doesn't seem to harm it. I suppose it's you that I have to destroy in order to kill it."

"Why?" Tokoyami managed to choke out, "Why do you want me dead so badly?"

The boss sighed. "All of you quirk users are a cancer. Heroes and Villains alike."

Tokoyami sucked in heavy breaths. "But you use a quirk, don't you?"

"Only when I have to," the boss replied.

"I am more than a mere quirk," Dark Shadow darkened the air with his voice, "I am my own mind and will. I have only one true allegiance and I will not abide you harming him."

There was a hum in the boss's throat. "Then what do you think of the heroes and villains, creature?"

"Dark Shadow…" Tokoyami plead, unsure what he was pleading for, but begging him to speak right.

Tokoyami himself didn't know what to say about it right now. Not over this last while, over the days and days of suffering at villain hands and waiting and waiting for help to come. Only for help to come at the hands of a different sort of villain.

Dark Shadow wrapped closer to Tokoyami.

"The villains harmed Tokoyami," Dark Shadow growled, "I want their bodies to burn alive. The heroes...have offered no aid. I...have no loyalty to them. I would harm them just the same."

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami gasped.

"You feel it too," Dark Shadow insisted to his host, "We have been abandoned. They must suffer for it."

Tokoyami pinched his eyes, teeth grit, unable to speak. He couldn't deny Dark Shadow...but how could he agree with him?

"Interesting," the boss said thoughtfully, "You intrigue me, Dark Shadow. I won't try to fight you anymore or hurt your master. You can call me Chisaki. We are the Shie Hissaikai."

Tokoyami couldn't place where or if he'd heard that name before, but it sounded dangerous. Shie Hissaikai.

"What sort of organization is that?" Tokoyami tried to bolster his voice, lift his confidence and sound at least challenging.

"Yakuza," he said blandly.

The teen winced. He didn't like the sound of that, but Dark Shadow hummed with interest.

"I thought the Yakuza had died out years ago," Tokoyami used every ounce of strength in his body to will Dark Shadow to stay calm.

"It would seem not," was all Chisaki said in return.

Tokoyami struggled to stand, using the wall behind him to prop him up and steady his shaky body.

"Fine...so you won't attack us," Tokoyami said, "Then what will you do with us? Will you let us leave?"

The blurry figure of Chisaki stepped towards them casually, no threat left in his stance.

"I could," he said, "I could let you leave and take your revenge and it may serve me to allow it. But…" there was something disenchanted in his pause, "You're in a pathetic state. You'd be back in the hands of my enemies in seconds. And I can't be sure what that fool let you know. I'd rather you stay...as my guest."

Tokoyami's gut turned at that phrase. Shigaraki had tried to convince him me wasn't a prisoner there as well… and then he'd burned and cut him.

"I don't require your hospitality," Tokoyami insisted, still barely standing on his own.

"I don't entirely care what you require," Chisaki sounded like he was rolling his eyes, "Dark Shadow can put up a fight, but you're both weak. You'll stay put and know your place here. It doesn't bother me to go back on my offer."

There was not enough strength in Tokoyami to feel confident making that sort of decision. He knew he couldn't do a thing himself to fend off another attack from Chisaki. He didn't sound very spent, just a bit exerted. It would all depend on Dark Shadow and there was a close link between Tokoyami and Dark Shadow's emotions and strengths. Dark Shadow was definitely better off at the moment, but Tokoyami could feel his own strain weighing down the creature. He could fight, but for how long before he was drained?

Dark Shadow's face was right beside his and could be made out just a bit clearer than anything else, so he tried to show that he was looking to him to make this decision.

The creature understood and pulled away from Tokoyami's body, embodying in front of him and facing Chisaki.

"We accept your hospitality," Dark Shadow said, "We are your guests, mortal."

Tokoyami didn't hear Chisaki say anything in response, but heard his footsteps recede and the door click back closed behind him.

Tokoyami let himself fall back to the floor and Dark Shadow came back to him curling around his body as he shook through strained tears.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. But Dark Shadow was here. No longer alone.

Everything else was wrong, flipped on its head, wracked in incorrectness. Everything except his companion.

For the first time in ages, he cried in relief instead of pain.


	6. Chapter 6: The Lies We Believe

The room had been fairly wrecked by Dark Shadow's fight with Chisaki, but the bed was enough intact for Tokoyami to be able to fall back on it and continue trying to rest. The world remained a splotchy blur as he was brought food and water and focussed his energy on recovering. He refused any change of clothes offered, clinging to his dirty, tattered hoodie and jeans like a last lifeline he couldn't bare to let go of.

This still felt like captivity...in a sense it was. But this was nothing like his last prison. He had been pretty much left alone for that first day other than to have food brought to him, which he recovered enough of an appetite to scarf down like his life depended on it.

More importantly he had Dark Shadow there all the while, even though he needed as much recovery as Tokoyami. He swiped food off of Tokoyami's plate and made sure the lights stayed off and the curtains drawn, which effectively rid Tokoyami of what little he could really see. He was willing to sacrifice that for Dark Shadow's wellbeing though.

The creature clung close to him in a way that felt like a needy cat, but Tokoyami knew it was protective and concerned. There was only one thing in the world that Dark Shadow felt loyalty to, that had been no lie.

Dark Shadow was able to feel much of what had happened to Tokoyami over all those days, but Tokoyami needed to hear it all out loud. He struggled to understand what he felt about it all or why it all had happened, the unfathomable unfairness of his lot, so he spoke it all to the monster, the creature of the void.

His anger rose with every word that struggled to get through his scratchy voice, not sounding quite as clear as it used to, each time hearing it reminding Tokoyami of why there were bandages around his neck. Maybe there had been more damage done than Tokoyami had wanted to believe. It was easy to pretend it wasn't as bad as it was when there were pain killers coursing through his body, but he touched the bandages too often to not keep reminding himself what the burned skin had felt like, how gruesome it must have looked.

With everything Tokoyami described and vented, Dark Shadow grew in size and fierceness to match. The black shadow was more and more determined that he would end Shigaraki and his goons, that they had never known suffering like he would make them suffer.

But the thing that stuck more than anything and that he was most apprehensive to mention was being ignored by the heroes. Being left to rot by his friends.

Dark Shadow was already firmly resolved to hate them, but Tokoyami had to know more...he couldn't just call them traitors without really knowing. Had anything Shigaraki shown him even been slightly true? He had to know that first.

He needed to get to a phone or a computer.

Tokoyami stomped his foot on the floor at the muddled, desperate thought, not even consoled that he had enough strength now to do so.

Even if he could get to a screen, he couldn't see anything. His eyes weren't recovering. Not even the hand right in front of his face decipherable enough to tell which way the bandages were wrapped.

The next time the door opened the man introduced himself as a doctor. He claimed that he was the one who had tended to him when they had brought him in and now wanted to check the injuries and provide him with more painkillers. Dark Shadow's caution would not be contended with and he looked over the doctor and the men who accompanied him very closely before letting him anywhere near. The two men who accompanied him remained at the door, but the doctor was allowed to approach and lay hands on him.

He replaced the bandages and made an unpleasant sound when he assessed the damage to Tokoyami's neck after some time being allowed to heal a bit.

"This is a terrible burn, son," the doctor said with more interest than disgust, "How did this even happen...it's...shaped like a handprint?"

Tokoyami grit his teeth threateningly at the doctor and he dropped his question.

After the injuries were checked over and Tokoyami was handed a handful of something to wash down the pain, the doctor hesitated backing away. He was watching closely as Tokoyami fumbled with getting a glass of water and noted how Dark Shadow assisted him.

"Let me check your eyes," the doctor ordered.

For some reason Tokoyami hesitated. The fact that his vision wasn't improving was driving him crazy, but...he really was afraid to hear from a medical professional what the real verdict might be. Without it he could keep trying to convince himself that it was temporary…

But it was more important to know the truth, so he nodded and let the doctor do his job.

There was a bright light flashing in each eye, but it was really nothing to compare with what Shigaraki had put him through so he didn't even flinch it.

After a bit of studying, some questions, and a few tests ,the doctor sounded unhappy again.

"You have severe damage to your retinas," he clicked his tongue, "It's like you've been trying to stare at the sun for a week straight. The most you can see is just shapes, you say?"

Tokoyami nodded. "They aren't clear, though. Distorted. Color is less clear too. The closer something is the easier it is to understand what it is, but I can't make out any details."

"Hm," the doctor said thoughtfully as he packed everything back, "I'll see what I can do."

And with that he was gone.

He didn't know why Chisaki kept them alive, what had possessed him to not finish them off that first day, or why he was offering real care to the teen now. It rolled over in Tokoyami's scattered mind with his countless other fears and apprehensions. Just another unknown, another thing he had to question and dance cautiously around.

Chisaki's gang, the ones who guarded Tokoyami and interacted with him the most weren't the psychotic villains he had grown accustomed to with the League of Villains. Far from the normal sorts he knew from his time as UA, but in a sense they were just people, with goals and loyalties and meaning behind their decisions. Maybe that didn't forgive the copious amount of crime that they had no issue bragging about, but it made Tokoyami considerably more comfortable than he could have ever dreamed while in the presence of the League of Villains. He wasn't really afraid of them...cautious perhaps, but at ease.

If felt like a long time of waiting around and of painstaking recovery with too much time to dwell on and sour on the subject of his capture and rescue. He stopped the gang members who came to bring him food whenever he could and asked them what was going on out in the world, hoping to glean some sort of information on himself and his old friends. They didn't seem to mind talking, which worked to Tokoyami's advantage.

Young heroes in training didn't seem to be the main focus of the Shie Hissaikai and there was not much any of them had to say on the subject. There wasn't a whole lot that they could tell him about UA or his classmates, but their fascination with Tokoyami in general made them amicable to his requests and took his prodding for them to garner further information with an almost friendly attitude. It had only been a few days, but the guys were becoming fond of the sulky teen and his dark humored companion.

Tokoyami didn't see Chisaki at all in those days, but the doctor came daily, bringing a few implements with him and other tests for Tokoyami's eyes, which never seemed to change his situation any.

There was a weighted sense of consignment in Tokoyami's chest with each day that the world around him remained a blotted blur. The doctor kept saying that he had some ideas, but nothing seemed to come of it, so Tokoyami started to give up hope again of any actual recovery. He couldn't really bare to think about the reality of going blind, but he wasn't going to hold his heart on the hope of it getting better either.

As his strength grew and he became more accustomed to the affects of the painkillers, he tried to talk to Dark Shadow about escaping, but the creature demanded his patience, which felt off coming from the chaotic and volatile beast. He still didn't seem to believe Tokoyami wouldn't be able to make it out on his own and the shadow was completely determined that their friends from UA were now their enemies. He wouldn't allow Tokoyami to go to them, no matter the benefit of the doubt he still tried to give them.

Dark Shadow seemed confident that if Chisaki came at them again he could defeat him and forced Tokoyami to remain still and patient, to recover. To let the doctor tend his wounds, let the guards gather information for them.

"We will take our vengeance when we are strong enough to do it," Dark Shadow mused in delight, "It will be long and sweet."

It burned in Tokoyami's mind, but every hour that he dwelled on Dark Shadow's repeated call for vengeance, the more the faces he saw weren't the villains. He tried to shake it off, but he imagined the faces of his classmates more and more. Lingered on thoughts of beating his teachers into the ground for forgetting and abandoning him.

Because it stuck clearer and clearer in his mind with every passing day that Dark Shadow repeated it and drove it into Tokoyami's mind that, though the villains had outright abused and hurt him, his friends had let it happen. That they were just as much at fault.

Class 1A was in an uproar. The teachers had to quarantine the students to the dorms to try and keep the situation contained, but the students were freaking out. They wanted to know what this meant.

There had been concerns passing around the staff at UA for some time now of a security leak. That there might have been a traitor in the ranks of UA, feeding information to the League of Villains. But they never expected it would be one of their students.

It had been a routine training exercise too, a normal day gone terribly wrong. The students were considering their work studies and a few offers had already come in. Midoriya, Tokoyami, Kirishima, Uraraka, and Tsuyu had all been chosen for work studies...the future looked bright for those students. Things looked promising.

And then the accident happened. A badly structured building, brought down by a misplaced explosion from Bakugo. Tokoyami was too slow to react and a shaft of metal slammed down through him, impaling the teenager into the dirt.

There was immediate horror turned to pure confusion as the form that they'd known as their classmate dissipated into what looked like a puddle of mud. There was nothing left of Tokoyami in a manner of moments and those left to witness it were a distraught mess.

Aizawa recognized the sight of it immediately. He remembered that strange quirk he had seen when the villains had attacked them at the camp, when he had killed the mud-made figure that took the form of a man until Aizawa had broken it. It had worked for the League of Villains or least its creator did.

Aizawa was the first to take charge of the situation, ordering every student to their rooms.

He called the other teachers and Principle Nezu to meet with him right away and they assessed the situation carefully. They tested every one of the students to make sure that there were no others among them, but it seemed that Tokoyami was the only one that had been some mud formed creature rather than a flesh and blood person.

Which left them with the burning question. What did this mean? About Tokoyami. About the League of Villains. About the suspected traitor in their midst.

Every theory was thrown onto the conference table. They spoke to Tokoyami's family. Spoke to the students. Questioned their prisoners from the camp incident.

There was no way of knowing if Tokoyami had ever really been Tokoyami…or if he had always been an instrument of the League.

The villains that they'd captured all said they didn't know him...except for one.

Aizawa knew it wasn't easy for All Might to sit with All For One again and question him, but they had to know.

He watched from the observation room as All Might stood down his imprisoned nemesis with strength and confidence that his hurt, broken body fought to hold.

Everything truly did shatter when All For One responded to All Might's question about Tokoyami. About his knowledge of and relation to the boy.

"He is Tomura's," All For One said coldly, "He could not serve my needs, so he serves Tomura's."

All For One would not go into any further detail, wouldn't explain what any of it meant, just insisted that Tokoyami was somehow Shigaraki's. The two heroes were left to speculate, left to the internal torment of coming to terms with it all. To accept what they knew it to mean, what all the signs were pointing to.

It broke every heart to come to terms with it and they could see the rebellious disbelief on their students faces when they made their determination, when they told them what they knew and what seemed to be the only answer.

A few days later Nezu made it a public announcement.

Tokoyami Fumikage, whether alive or dead, whether he had been a person that they had even known at all, was a League of Villains spy...a traitor.


	7. Chapter 7: Masters of Our Own Fate

Tokoyami Fumikage was a traitor, a villain spy.

Those were the words that reached Tokoyami's ears, the report that one of the guards, a large, good tempered man named Hanto gave to him that day, confusion painting his face as he relayed what he had heard to the teenager. And in minutes, Chisaki was at his door again.

"A League of Villains' spy, is it?" was Chisaki's heated question.

Tokoyami's strength was back to normal besides the aches of his still healing wounds, off of painkillers almost completely, just for the sake of keeping his head clear, taking the lingering, dulled pains instead.

He stood bold now, facing Chisaki with crossed arms, though he could barely see him. His insides were gelatine, his mind reeling and blood boiling, but Chisaki only saw confidence.

"Lies," Tokoyami spat, voice rolling through a still choppy vibrato, "Those villains are the ones who did all this to me and you would believe that I served them?"

"It could have been punishment for a poorly completed job," Chisaki said thoughtfully, "I've done worse to those who have failed me."

Tokoyami remembered the bloody explosion that had wet his room the first day he had been here and the long time it took for it to be cleaned up. Chisaki was not speaking with empty words.

"The heroes spread lies of us," Dark Shadow emerged to vibrate the room with the deep, loud echo of his voice. His presence had magnitude today. "They wish to use us as scapegoats for their failings. They must burn!"

"Dark Shadow be silent!" Tokoyami snapped at him, taking the creature by surprise. He didn't usually take that tone with him and the creature turned a bright yellow eye at him with an angered slant.

He could feel the rage in Dark Shadow, could taste the blood lust and spiteful shock at being barked at by his host. But he stood firm.

Tokoyami hated doing it. The wild nature, the freedom of its chaotic essence was what Tokoyami always admired most about Dark Shadow, because he himself had always found it hard to break from rules and the beaten path as a child. His classmates had thought him an edgy rebel type, but the entire thing, the black and arcane way he presented himself and held his interests, had been an insecurity long before they had been his persona. This last year at UA was one of the first he'd truly tried to come into his own with publicly accepting those interests and used the opportunity to try and create an heir of mystery about himself, speaking in archaic ways and dropped unsettling phrases here and there to keep everyone off guard about him. But he lived in constant fear that his classmates would point it out as ridiculous and call him immature. But it was who he wanted to be and there was only one reason he had been enough to live it.

Truth be told, the way he lived and acted since UA was the most comfortable he'd ever felt about himself and he owed that to Dark Shadow for giving him the courage to be himself and express his interests. To create the persona he wanted to be his hero identity.

He owed that and much more to Dark Shadow...and it hurt to try and quell him. He hated to admit that Tomura's words about him trying to control Dark Shadow felt strangely correct. He hated that he almost agreed with that psychopath. That he really did hate that he'd been trying to control Dark Shadow rather than supporting his chaotic strengths all this time. And that maybe he liked Dark Shadow better no being restrained.

The worst part about it was that Dark Shadow did go quiet at his command, pulling back to allow Tokoyami the forefront and control of the situation, without a fight. He didn't enjoy dominating him like that, but this was necessary.

"I have had no interaction with the League of Villains other than to fight them until they took back when we were in the forest at the summer camp," Tokoyami insisted, "I was given to a man called All For One who they said would take away my quirk, but he failed. I was returned to Shigaraki Tomura only to learn that my classmate who had been captured with me had been rescued, but that I had been forgotten. The villains spent days trying to break my will and make me turn to their side and told me day after day that not a person was coming to my rescue, which I refused to believe until your men took me away from them. And now I have no choice but to believe it with what I have been told today. They think me a traitor and so left me to die…"

Tokoyami shuddered with the need to break something, wishing he could see Chisaki's face to know if anything he was saying had any effect on him.

"If you showed me Shigaraki today I would break him," Tokoyami's voice cracked on the words, hardly believing that such a statement would come from his own mouth.

Chisaki hummed with intrigue. "And the heroes who abandoned you?"

Tokoyami's eyes widened into the nothingness and something in his demeanor fell.

"I don't know," he swallowed, his scratchy voice catching, "They were my friends…"

There was silence in the air for a good few moments, before Chisaki's feet shuffled around.

"Come with me," he said.

Tokoyami frowned in confusion. He thought he could see Hanto beckoning him, but Dark Shadow was really the one who had to guide him along, he was the one that could actually see. He wrapped over Tokoyami like a cloak, much like the Abyssal Black Body form they took as their ultimate fighting move for close quarters combat.

The halls outside of the room were pretty bright so Tokoyami kept his eyes closed, having grown used to the darkness Dark Shadow had created in their room. It wasn't like his sight was doing much for him right now anyway. It was better to trust Dark Shadow to turn and direct his body while he propelled them forward.

They came to another room and Tokoyami was directed to take a seat on a long couch. There was very little to make out from this room either and Tokoyami had really stopped trying to fight through the blur. The world was moving blotches, smells, and sounds now.

"Wait here," Chisaki ordered and left without another word.

He didn't seem to like sharing what was on his mind much, but then Tokoyami wasn't keen on trusting him either. He was yakuza...he claimed to hate anyone who would use a quirk, hero and villain alike. Chisaki was dangerous and unpredictable. Tokoyami was certain that if he really believed the teen to be a League of Villains spy he'd never have left that room alive.

Hanto remained in the room with him and Dark Shadow shifted to rest against Tokoyami's shoulder.

"What does your boss want?" Dark Shadow asked their guard, currently a very casual looking splotch against the far wall to Tokoyami's eyes.

"If I knew I couldn't tell you," Hanto shrugged into the words, "But you aren't dead yet so count your blessings."

Dark Shadow huffed sinister amusement, but Tokoyami was unable to find humor at the moment. He was too apprehensive about what Chisaki intended and too downed by the knowledge that the people who had been his friends all believed him a traitor. That his own teachers had stated to the public that Tokoyami was a spy...that his family had likely heard this...that anyone had believed it.

He wanted to feel that he should rush back and explain himself, set the record straight. But it was drowned in a horribly rampant rage, a spiteful sour taste that left him hurt and aching. Not that someone would accuse it...that the people who had known him believed a word of it.

Dark Shadow was practically vibrating with energy, excitement coursing through the abyssal creature over Tokoyami's dark feelings. He knew he should try and compose himself, that letting his emotions get out of hand could set Dark Shadow off, but he didn't really want to control him either. Maybe Dark Shadow was just bold and free enough to openly say and do what was already in Tokoyami's head.

A long time passed of just sitting in that room, going over what he'd been told in his head again and again. Waiting for Chisaki, listening to Dark Shadow exchange quips with Hanto, the man finding easy enjoyment in the company of the shadow creature.

When finally Chisaki returned Tokoyami shot out of his seat, listening for anything that might tell him what was going on or if Chisaki was about to kill them for the lies that UA had spread about him.

"I have a proposition for you," Chisaki's fingers wrapped against his legs in a very subtle sound.

"I'm listening," Tokoyami said curtly.

"I have just made an agreement with the League of Villains…"

Dark Shadow growled and Tokoyami tensed, backing up a step. He immediately rushed to think how he was going to escape, how he could slip out of this alive.

"Calm down," Chisaki groaned in annoyance, "I have goals and sometimes you have to work with the enemy to reach them. But I'm offering you a chance to get your vengeance…"

Tokoyami's shoulders relaxed some, Dark Shadow's head tilting in intrigue.

"Once Shigaraki is no longer of use to me I will need him dead," Chisaki explained, "And I'm willing to let you have that satisfaction as well as the assistance of my people in helping you attain any other vendetta you might have."

"If?" Tokoyami filled in, unable to hide his own growing intrigue, though it was covered in layers of apprehension.

"If…" Chisaki agreed, "you agree to work with us in the meantime. I want strong fighters on my side and I believe that's what you are."

"You saw for yourself," Dark Shadow said triumphantly, causing Tokoyami to snap a quick hiss at him.

"We aren't villains," Tokoyami ground his heel.

"You aren't exactly heroes either," Chisaki said bemused, "I don't want either. It's a foolish system of labeling and it should all end. But I'm not asking you to adopt my ideologies or see yourself as part of the plague that the quirk users are, I'm just offering a deal. Consider yourself a hired gun if that makes you feel better."

Tokoyami shook his head. "You want us to throw away being heroes to become yakuza?"

Chisaki huffed. "It doesn't look like you have much of a future as a hero anymore, kid. Do you think you'll run back to your precious heroes and just explain to them that they were mistaken? Even if you convinced them it won't change your reputation. So either you can be Tokoyami Fumikage the dead villain spy or you can be a Shie Hissaikai and leave the stupid ideals of heroes and villains behind."

Teeth ground together in Tokoyami's skull, batting the things Chisaki said back and forth. A week ago he wouldn't have even spared a second of consideration on it...but so much had changed since then.

"I won't harm innocent people," Tokoyami insisted, feeling like that was truly the argument to end Chisaki's pitch.

"I'm not asking you to," Chisaki clicked his tongue, almost sounding annoyed, "It doesn't serve the Shie Hissaikai to go out massacring and making big shows like the villains do. You won't find that the people we deal with are at all...innocent. We have bigger aspirations than frisking kids on street corners and pushing old ladies into traffic. We're yakuza not riffraff."

Tokoyami flexed his hands at his sides, hating that he wasn't as resistant to the offer as he should have been, hating that he was only prying further rather than shutting it down without question.

"And what are your aspirations?"

"It doesn't really matter," Chisaki said, "Because I'm not offering for you to join my permanent ranks. You can be muscle for my operations until I need Shigaraki dead or we can settle this here and now."

Tokoyami heard fabric shifting and could make out the blur of Chisaki's form assuming an offensive position.

"I won't go easy on you this time, though," Chisaki sounded very serious and Tokoyami believed that he'd fight them right this moment if that's what they decided, "I'd rather you fight on my side of things rather than have to kill you, but it won't lose me any sleep."

"Wait," Tokoyami clenched his teeth and threw up his hands, demanding a pause to the rapid pace of this situation, "Just wait…I...we need to talk about this." he turned an eye towards Dark Shadow, though it wasn't as though he could garner anything from the look.

Chisaki straightened and fabric pulled back across skin.

"You have until the end of the day," Chisaki placed his ultimatum, "If you feel confident enough that you can beat me in a fight than by all means refuse my offer." His knuckles cracked. "I'm more than willing to give you the chance."

The casualness of his statement told Tokoyami that he truly had no fear of losing in a fight against them, that he was confident and determined that he would best them. And Tokoyami couldn't help believing the same. There was something about the way he spoke and the air he left in the room that told Tokoyami that he was out of his league going against him, much like they had been against All For One.

But even knowing that. He couldn't decide this outright. There was so much to consider and a real battle of fears.

They accepted the ultimatum and follow Hanto back to the room. He left them to their discussion with only a quick word, something small and encouraging like he hoped they'd choose correctly and then shut the door.

"You wish to fight him?" Dark Shadow grumbled.

Tokoyami sighed and shook his head, pacing the room. "I don't. We...we'll lose. I can feel it."

Dark Shadow seemed to roll his eyes into his words. "I'll crush him!"

"You'll spend every second trying to keep him off of me while I stand defenseless because I'm still blind, damn it!" Tokoyami barked at him and cursed into the darkness of the room, "Maybe if I was still...maybe if I wasn't holding you back and we could fight like we used to...but…"

"So you want to join him then?" Dark Shadow sounded surprised, but in a pleased sort of way.

"No," Tokoyami twisted his feathers in his hands, "I don't want to be yakuza or some other type of criminal. I...still want to be a hero...I think…"

There was a displeased sound from Dark Shadow. "We can't do that if we're dead. And we can't be a heroes in this world of the living anymore either. If not Shie Hissaikai, then what? We have no place among the heroes or villains. Not anymore."

"We aren't criminals," Tokoyami insisted.

Dark Shadow seemed exasperated and impatient. "Fine. Use them, then."

Tokoyami paused, turned his head to the gleam of yellow that he knew to be Dark Shadow's eye.

"Use the Shie Hissaikai to get back on our feet and out of here," Dark Shadow continued, "then we make our own way from there and hunt down whoever we want. Let Chisaki help us under the guise of helping him and then turn on him when the time is right."

It sounded so underhanded, so wrong, like something a villain would do. It wasn't how he was raised, wasn't the ideals he had been molded by. But those ideals were formed by the very people that now called him a traitor and a spy and maybe it was his spiteful youth talking, but it made those ideas start to sour on his tongue.

This wasn't about ideals anymore. Those had failed him. No one was going to look after them, but themselves...and if this was the options that they had...then he would do whatever it took to survive. They only had each other left after all.

"I can't say I like it," Tokoyami grit his teeth, "But you're right...it's our only chance at surviving this."

There was a deep chuckle reverberating from Dark Shadow's throat as he hung closely to Tokoyami's side.

"I knew you'd see things my way."


	8. Chapter 8: Light of the Darkest Night

"I just can't make myself believe it."

The air in the dorms was stiff and thick with tension. It seemed to condense in the common area that night, wrapping around the few who occupied the area with a sense of weight and unease.

The news hadn't come easy to the students. If news it even was. The teachers were convinced. The media was convinced. The world around them said their classmate was a traitor, but it couldn't seem to permeate that particular group.

Shoji, Midoriya, Todoroki and even Bakugou, though he kept his distance. The four who'd been there with Tokoyami on the night that the League of Villains had attacked the UA students at camp. They'd all sort of come together on the subject in a similar sense of disbelief. And maybe it was because of them all having seen him at his strongest and most vulnerable that night that had brought them together in this heated conversation.

"What else is it supposed to mean then?" Bakugo grumbled loudly.

Midoriya wrung his hands and he mulled it over and over. "Aizawa-sensei said the last creature he saw made up of clay and mud like that seemed to be a copy, because he defeated the same thing more than once. Maybe he was just a copy and not the real Tokoyami?"

"Of course he wasn't the real Tokoyami, that's the whole point!" Bakugo snapped, folding his arms where he leaned against the wall.

There was a bubble of sensitivity around Bakugo these days and it wasn't hard to guess why. He'd caused the accident that had killed the Tokoyami clone. If it hadn't been a clone this uproar at UA would have been very different over these last few days. But however badly Midoriya wanted to console him, perhaps tell him that the real Tokoyami may have been sharp enough to avoid it had it been him there instead of the clone, but he knew his childhood friend would rather eat his own finger than hear sympathetic words from Midoriya of all people.

"That's not what I meant," Midoriya frowned, "Everyone keeps saying he was swapped out at some point, but no one has asked if he was ever real to begin with. And could a clone do everything that Tokoyami could do, including all of the things Dark Shadow was capable of? And if he could, would there be a limit? Like in the forest when Dark Shadow got out of hand, would a copy be able to accomplish that?"

Todoroki and Shoji were watching Midoriya's rambling with quirked eyebrows, but it was Bakugo who screamed at him to shut up. Midoriya was so used to it that he just gradually quieted his rampant mind down and sighed, shaking his head.

Shoji was the next to speak. "He can't be a villain," he shook his head, clenching many fists, "That's not who he is."

"Or was," Todoroki added to Shoji's disdain.

"He's not-"

Todoroki stayed firm and monotone. "He could be. Official reports say he is MIA and without knowing how long he was a clone or if he really was ever actually a person we knew, it's safe to say that he's as good as dea-"

"Todoroki please!" Midoriya cut him off, seeing the horror in Shoji's face and feeling his own heart drop low in his chest at the dismal, yet practical statement.

Todoroki only just then seemed to grasp why Midoriya had interrupted his thought after another moment of watching them and folded his hands in his lap apologetically.

"What about you Bakugo?" Todoroki redirected his attention across the room, "You were captured by the League...did you hear anything about him or about their plans?"

Bakugo scoffed, but Midoriya could see his heckles rising at the reminder of the terrifying situation they'd barely gotten him out of.

"They talked a lot," Bakugo rolled his eyes, "They wouldn't shut the hell up! …but no. I never saw him or heard about him or anything."

"They almost captured him that day too," Midoriya thought about it, "Shoji...you were able to reach him in time...but if he was one of their spies, why would they want to capture him?"

"It could have been an inconspicuous way to pull him out of the field," Todoroki mused, "Maybe they feared we'd find out he wasn't real or that he was a traitor and wanted to bring him back before we blew open their operation."

Shoji's many arms folded in and he stood, pacing around the room. "There's too many unknowns and they had no right to make a statement like that. There's no proof…"

"Aizawa said they'd been searching for a traitor for a while now," Midoriya hated to argue against Shoji, but felt it necessary to approach every angle, "Apparently a lot of people were already under suspicion...and he was one of them."

"He deserves better than this," Shoji ground his heel, "He's not a traitor and I won't believe it. I'll find a way to prove it…"

"If he's even still alive…" Bakugo said under his breath and Todoroki nodded in agreement.

"Even if he isn't," Midoriya stood before Shoji's blood could boil over in response, "If he's innocent...he does deserve to be proven so. I agree with you Shoji. Judgment was cast way too fast. I'll help you. If he's alive we'll find him and if he's not, we'll find out the truth and maybe clear his name."

Shoji gripped Midoriya's determined fist with one of his own and nodded in gratitude.

"Thank you, Midoriya."

"I will do what I can as well," Todoroki joined the huddle, before they all glanced over to Bakugo.

His face got all scrunched up and two blasts went off in his hands. "I'll find him before any of you losers do!"

Ever enthusiastic in the most volatile ways the three just nodded at Bakugo's inclusion.

They had no idea where to start or what to do, but there was determination that they wouldn't just accept things the way they were laid out. They wouldn't give up on Tokoyami, not until every lead had been exhausted or their hopes proved wrong.

"Finally!" the doctor's voice was cheerful and excited, "This should do it."

Tokoyami let his head be tilted this way and that, but bared his teeth at the forcefulness of the doctor's handling. If whatever he was doing didn't actually help he was determined to have Dark Shadow physically launch the man across the room. He was sick of this guy despite the actual good he had done.

Chisaki had taken Tokoyami's agreement with the same air he'd reacted to everything else with. Half boredom, half already moved on to the next thing. He was a busy boss with more on his plate than the concerns of one teenager, so he just nodded and told one of his men to handle things from there.

At this point, Tokoyami finally agreed to take the clothes that were offered him and, with approval from the doctor, was given use of a shower. It had been both miserable and incredible at once. It felt like so long since he'd been clean like that, but the burns on his body did not react well to the heat of the water. Pain was just a regularity now.

He put on the clothes he'd been given, no real clue what they looked like, but their shape felt like a simple long sleeved t-shirt and a comfortable pair of pants made with a warm material. He pulled his hoodie back on over it, caring very little that he knew the sleeves were tattered and the fabric stained in his own blood. He wasn't ready to let go of it just yet, wasn't ready to accept that this was really the fate he'd chosen, that his old life of heroes and high school was being left behind.

Hanto was the one guiding them around and instructing them on what to do. All the while Tokoyami pondered over and over how he was actually supposed to be of use to Chisaki in the state he was in. Dark Shadow was strong and powerful certainly, but their truest strength came from teamwork and Tokoyami was still mostly blinded.

It was confusing that the first place Hanto brought them after they'd cleaned up was the doctor's station and not some next step in initiation. Tokoyami figured it was just to rebandage the burns or something, but they were as healed as they were going to get and it felt unnecessary.

But the doctor brushed off the other injuries quickly, going straight to inspecting Tokoyami's eyes once more. It was irritating, certainly, especially when he'd experienced the doctor's enthusiasm before and saw nothing come of it. But this time the doctor placed a lense in front of his eye and Tokoyami gasped onto his damaged vocal chords.

He had to blink and hold back something from bursting out of him.

Through the lense he could see the room in front of him. It wasn't perfect, not the most focussed visual he'd ever seen, but he could tell what the shapes were meant to be, knew that the splotch he saw on the wall with one eye was actually a framed picture with the other that blinked through the lense.

"Better?" The doctor asked.

Tokoyami nodded wordlessly.

Dark Shadow moved to put his face in front of the lense and Tokoyami couldn't fight the smile, because with the close proximity he could genuinely see Dark Shadow well. The clear gleam of his yellow eyes and the hook of his beaklike face. The creature grinned back, noting the joy in Tokoyami's expression to be able to see him semi-clearly again.

They tested a few other lenses to be sure, but even the best one didn't return his vision to normal. It was enough though. If he could see the world around him and know what he was looking at that was all he needed to be overjoyed. It was more than he thought he'd have and a challenge he knew he could overcome.

The doctor finished fitting the lenses into their holder and handed Tokoyami something strange. It wasn't glasses, but a leather strapped set of goggles. Tokoyami felt them over with confusion, hesitating to put it on.

"What is this?" he asked, feeling Dark Shadow nudge the material with interest.

"I was instructed to make those for you," the doctor said while cleaning up his station, "You'll have to go to the armorer for everything else, though."

That wasn't much of an explanation, but before he could argue it further Hanto was instructing them to come with him.

With a long swallow and a second to come to terms with what he was doing, he pulled the goggles over his head and set them over his eyes. They fit perfectly and suddenly all the examination the doctor had done and the measurements he'd taken made sense. It really was an amazingly crafted piece and, best of all, he could see the door in front of him and the hall it led out to and the man standing in the middle of it.

Hanto was a muscly sort with a strangely kind face above the mouth. Below his eyes, covering his nose and mouth, was a short, leather and metal beak. Suddenly the light distortion that seemed to follow every voice among the Shie Hissaikai made sense to him. Masks. They all wore them. And the beak shape somehow felt homelike to Tokoyami.

Their guard jerked his head to get them to follow and led them through the well lit halls of the base. The walls were glaringly white and Tokoyami was almost tempted to push the goggles back off. But he'd take a little bit of bright paint over being blind again.

They ended up in what he was told was the armory, but it looked like the black market condensed into a single room. The guy in charge of it took Tokoyami aside, a light chuckle in his throat as he chattered on about him being a new recruit and how the green kids always got the cockiness knocked out them soon enough, little realizing who he was dealing with.

They bypassed the myriad of weapons as the shopkeep shuffled through different materials and clothing items on his shelves. It was mundane and even boring, but Tokoyami was mesmerized by it, so unbelieving and grateful that he wasn't so entirely handicapped anymore. It didn't matter that he was staring at a gun case, he was just happy that he could tell it was a gun case.

The guy tried to convince Tokoyami to give up the hoodie, but he resisted until he was offered something a little more suited to him. He handed Tokoyami a cloak, which held a warmth of familiarity, much like the cloak from his usual hero costume, but weightier with a durable black material. This one had a hood that dangled at a point at the top to droop just down his feathered forehead and mask his face over in shadow. The yellow of his beak was the only thing that could be seen clearly besides the glint off of the metal bits in the goggles.

As he looked it over closely in the mirror he took in the sight of the goggles, even now peering through the shadow of the hood. They had a steampunk vibe to them, something he might have seen a cosplayer wear, but paired with the cloak and steel black boots he'd been given they added an eerie look to the ensemble. His feathers disappeared in the material and if he hadn't been able to see the yellow of his beak he'd have struggle to even recognize himself.

And even that was changed in a matter of moments. The last thing the man handed him was a roomy, leather mask, the same sort that he'd seen Hanto wearing, except this one was longer. It stretched past the end of his true beak and hooked a little at the end, almost gruesome looking, but intimidating more than that.

With a tight knot in his chest, Tokoyami slipped it onto this face, fastening it with a buckle at the base of his skull and lowering his battered hands to look himself in the face. He couldn't turn away, but it was a sight he was shaken to see.

A pair of light black gloves were grabbed from the shelves to finish the outfit and it suddenly felt very real. That this was what he'd chosen to be. He matched with the Shie Hissaikai now, basked in a somewhat unique style completed with their signature mask.

And well he should.

He was Shie Hissaikai now. At least for as long as he had to be. And for as long as that was, he had to become this. No ideas of heroism could remain.

This was about survival. And to survive, he would be yakuza.

For the first few days since he'd donned the mask things were tense and apprehensive. He wore the full attire of this new life at all times, finding something sickening about his face being seen by his fellow Shie Hissaikai. Everything beneath the cloak and mask felt like a dead man, something nonexistent or lost to the past and all in a manner of days.

When he was covered in the black and hidden behind the leather he didn't feel like Tokoyami. He felt like an enigma, could see the curiosity on the faces around him, the way a few of them, grown men who'd likely taken human lives before, shifted away from him while in his presence. And with his recovery in full swing and his sight returned to a functional degree, he truly did feel like a threat to be feared.

He was faceless, without identity to these people, with a powerful creature of destruction at his disposal and a growing interest in the rush that came from the adrenaline pumping decision to be a part of this.

Rage had taken a permanent lodging in the center of his chest and it fueled his every step. It was hard to remember a time before that leaden feeling had become a part of him. But it had been weeks now since he was first taken by the villains and what used to be normalcy had become a recurring dream to wake him in restless nights.

Pain and anger was his new normal. The cuts were scarring over, but the burns refused to heal so quickly. And he could only hear so much of Dark Shadow's persistent cursing of their enemies before he too adopted it as a constant emotion. How he felt towards his classmates still seemed unclear in his mind, though he knew it wasn't good, but the burning vendetta aching to the tips of his fingers to pay back the League of Villains for what they had done was agonizing at times.

It was difficult being patient. Grating to work carefully with the Shie Hissaikai and learn their operation, when all he wanted was to get to the next step. To go up to the surface, get beyond the walls of their base, find an opportunity to get away and hunt down Shigaraki. But day in and day out he was stuck within the well guarded, highly secured barrier. The other gang members could come and go, but Hanto had warned him not to test Chisaki's good graces, not to give him any reason to mistrust him.

So he grit his teeth and watched longingly as people and vehicles left and returned. With all of his freedom to roam and participate and learn of the Shie Hissaikai, he felt more like a prisoner than ever.

To pass most of his time usefully he stayed as often and as long as he could in the pitch, stalking up to anyone that looked like a challenge and demanding a spar. The very first fight had gone poorly. Dark Shadow emerged to take on the man and spread a gasp among the onlookers and their opponent. It was the first time these men, besides the ones Chisaki kept close and in his trust, had all really seen what it was Tokoyami was bringing to the table. Before that moment he was just a new hooded, masked face without even a name for them to call him by.

Though Dark Shadow was itching to vent the pent up rage they both held onto at the muscled build of their opponent, Tokoyami was still adjusting to his new way of seeing. He couldn't follow the movements of his attacker well and wasn't able to see his surroundings well enough to be able to move with the speed and freedom he needed. Much like he had predicted would happen if they had been forced to face Chisaki, Dark Shadow ended up fending off attacks to his host almost the whole match and barely managed to knock the guy on his ass before he could slam Tokoyami beak first into the pitch.

It was a wakeup call. Tokoyami realized how sloppy he'd gotten and how much work he really had to do. It riled him up and calmed him down all at once.

To make an escape and put himself out onto the streets in search of a fight when he could barely win a demure match in the training grounds was ridiculous and Tokoyami knew better. His pride took a beating and he hated every second of admitting it to himself. But maybe this waiting game wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe he needed to utilize this time to get to the point where he truly could crush not only Shigaraki and his gang, but Chisaki and his people as well if he needed to.

For the first time since he'd arrived there, he was grateful it was taking a while for Chisaki to give him an assignment, grateful that he was mostly ignored by the higher ups of the gang and left with the rabble of less experienced, less dangerous type. Grateful that he was trapped here.

At least he was relatively safe. As long as he didn't stick his nose too far into things. He could feel the cautious eyes from those few people that knew who he was, that little guy named Mimic especially. He was certain he'd be dead in moment if he gave them a reason to think he had ulterior motives here or had any deeper interests in their underground operations.

There was one day he'd noticed the voice of what sounded like a young girl. She seemed distressed and Tokoyami had reacted immediately to see if she was in danger or hurt, but was stopped by Hanto who's fingers dug deep into Tokoyami's shoulder.

"Don't bother about things that don't concern you," he had said, narrowed eyes saying so much more.

It went against every instinct that had been trained into him at UA, but he listened to Hanto and dropped it. He'd dropped more than a few things since then and it was a fight against his old self to get the nagging to take action out of his head. He wasn't a hero anymore...he was a survivor. That was the choice he'd made.

The hardest part was seeing Shigaraki's people intermingle with the Shie Hissaikai. He didn't see much of it, since it wasn't anything Chisaki wanted him having anything to do with, but it didn't sting his already volatile attitude any less. There was a certain satisfaction being that his new uniform disguised him so well that he was able to pass right by them without them recognizing him and he couldn't deny the rush that came when he was briefly asked a question by Toga. She didn't recognize his voice either when he gave his short answer, the jagged disruption to his voice an extra mask to his identity. It took everything in his willpower to keep it together, though, to not drop his guise and give her back in full the pain that she had given him. But he remembered that to do so would mean his own life.

His only recourse in dealing with knowing that the Shie Hissaikai and League of Villains were currently working together was to stay as distracted as possible. To focus entirely on building his body back to full strength and adapting to his new disability, while developing how he worked with Dark Shadow.

After a few more barely won matches and a couple losses, it seemed apparent that something had to give. Whatever they were doing wasn't working and they needed to change their tactic.

The best place to start seemed to be practicing after dark. They went outdoors to the training pitch on their own, having been allowed a few more privileges as time went on, and Dark Shadow would just purr in the darkness of the moonless night. Tokoyami could feel the pure magnitude of his strength growing with the broad and shadowy environment, but for himself, he found his own abilities were more disorganized.

The darkness made it much harder to see, goggles or not and he found his frustration mounting quickly at trying to go through basic moves while navigating his surroundings. When he tripped on the edge of the ring and fell back hard, his fist crashed into the ground beside him, curses falling out of his mouth like a waterfall.

Dark Shadow became a dome over him, peering bright yellow eyes down at him and huffing.

"Something wrong?" he asked almost patronizingly.

Tokoyami grit his teeth and sat up, dusting off the black cloak and the black attire beneath it.

"It's no use!" he fumed, "I'm not completely blind anymore, but I still can't see well enough to do anything! And it's worse in the dark. That's where I have to be at my strongest to fight along with you and that's where I feel most like an uncoordinated child!"

He stood and kicked the dirt and sand.

Dark Shadow grumbled, seeming similarly annoyed. "You must overcome it or we will not survive the Shie Hissaikai."

"I'm well aware of that," Tokoyami crossed his arms, pushing the goggles up onto his feathered forehead and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.

There were bright spots in his eyes at the forceful rubbing which soon faded out to what seemed like pure nothing in the pitch black of the night. He left the goggles away from his face and just sighed at his reality, the reality of borderline blindness.

"There's nothing I can do like this," he bit the night air, "Perhaps I am better left for dead."

Tokoyami had never before noted Dark Shadow's movement really making a sound, but in that moment could hear his twist in the air like a low gust of wind. Their attachment allowed Tokoyami to sense his actions to a certain degree, but it was about as clear as his sight in a lit room without glasses. Shapes and motion, but no clear details.

"That is the attitude of a weakling," Dark Shadow growled and coiled around him, "Unacceptable."

"What else am I supposed to do?" Tokoyami shouted, throwing out a hand to swipe Dark Shadow away, but making contact.

It shocked Tokoyami when he felt the impact and heard Dark Shadow hiss and jerk away.

"Dark Shadow I'm sorry I-"

"Not so useless after all," Dark Shadow huffed to Tokoyami's surprise, "Try to strike me again!"

Tokoyami lingered in confusion for a good solid moment before pinching his eyes closed in the darkness and standing, fists clenched at his sides. He took a long breath and opened his eyes, focussing hard on the small glint of light that was Dark Shadow's eyes and swung out at it.

He caught air this time and Dark Shadow shoved him back into the dirt.

"Stop using your eyes," he commanded, "They obviously don't work so don't use them."

"How am I supposed to-"

"We fight in the dark," Dark Shadow was vibrating over him, his intensity buzzing in a way that Tokoyami could feel, "Your eyes have never been like mine. You can't see through it. You were always going to have to learn to fight like this and it's now or never, you've just fooled yourself into thinking that seeing was important. You have other senses. Use them!"

Tokoyami froze, stunned by Dark Shadow's words. Somehow the creature was right. It stung like hell, but Tokoyami knew there was a lot that he'd been trained in at UA that he no longer could hold to, even in how he interacted with Dark Shadow. It made sense. Dark Shadow could see in the dark, but Tokoyami had no such infrared sight. He'd always been easily adapted to the dark, but his own reaction timing and precision were at a slight disadvantage there. And now he lacked any advantage on his own. He had to learn to function in the dark or else they wouldn't survive this.

Slowly he rose back to his feet and turned back to Dark Shadow, pushing off the goggles and tossing them off to the side, out of the ring. There was a pleased rumble in Dark Shadow's voice.

"Fight me," Dark Shadow demanded and went at him.

It went badly at first and Tokoyami was knocked to the ground over and over, but he kept getting back up. He kept his eyes sealed shut and honed in on his hearing and feeling of the world around him.

After an hour of this, Tokoyami finally managed to follow the instincts in his body and land a full hit onto his opponent, putting a smile on both of their faces. He was starting to feel it. Starting to feel his survival instincts from all the time he'd spent blinded returning. He hadn't even realized the things he'd done to function and move around before he'd gotten the lenses, but he could start to understand them clearly now, especially with Dark Shadow here.

Another night of this combat opened another eye for him and from there it became Tokoyami's only focus. That sense of his connection to Dark Shadow was more powerful than he'd imagined and was developing into a sixth sense all its own. An awareness of sensing the world around him through the creature, of being able to sense his position and actions as well. Very soon Dark Shadow was entirely unable to even put a scrape on him and finally Tokoyami felt ready to fight for real once again.

He had the armorer add blinders onto his goggles the next day and once they were attached he started his next fight with the first gang member willing. The blinders went down and Dark Shadow came out, two shadowy creatures, cloaked in an air of danger facing off a goon in a mask.

It was hardly even a fight. Tokoyami rushed him with speed and precision and weeks of anger and frustration simply poured out of them both.

The teen couldn't see any of it, but he could feel it. Could feel Dark Shadows unrivaled intensity, the ebbing darkness that poured from them. The way it smothered their opponent as they beat him senseless into the ground and went so far as to crack his nose open.

The blinders flipped back and Tokoyami was able to see the results of the fight, finding his stomach turned. His heart raced in the adrenaline of the fight and his eyes widened in interest at what he'd done.

Their victim was being pulled off the pitch and the others were whispering cautiously, hanging back with a fearful stance as if they might need to run. It was awe, but mistrust at the same time. It was obvious that they had no clue what to make of the mysterious new addition to their organization.

Perhaps if Tokoyami could see himself in that moment he'd have understood why they had whispered the word "reaper" in hushed voices. In the light Dark Shadow couldn't draw any shadows in, but in his vibrance could pour out darkness into the area around him. Shadows took shape around them, rolling like heatwaves off of the masked, hooded figure at the center of the ring.

The awe and fear didn't subside when Dark Shadow pulled back into Tokoyami and vanished, though. He was still haunting, still dripping danger and something unhinged in the heave and fall of his chest under the dense cloak.

But when Tokoyami turned to leave the ring his eyes fell on a face he'd hoped he could have continued avoiding, Chisaki Kai. His eyes were clearly on Tokoyami and he was very pointed when he told him to follow him.

In his heart Tokoyami faltered and panicked, but his footsteps didn't waver. He went right in step with the boss and left the frightened bunch behind, whispering about him and what Chisaki wanted with the new guy.

Tokoyami wondered the same, but could guess he wasn't going to like it.

"I have a use for you...Reaper," Chisaki gave a downward glance to Tokoyami to gauge his reaction to calling him that.

He betrayed nothing, but hoped that it wasn't going to be a regular thing that he was called that. He wasn't looking to have a name among the Shie Hissaikai. This was only temporary.

"Finally," Tokoyami groaned, hiding well that he'd been more than content not being bothered by the boss for what were surely questionable tasks, "Do you want Shigaraki disposed of now?"

It was almost sarcastic, but slightly hopeful.

Chisaki stayed staring straight ahead, unamused. "Jokes aren't a good look for you," his tone was harsh, "I need you to go with some of my men to handle a dispute with one of our distributors."

Tokoyami wanted badly to ask what it was exactly that they were distributing, but remembered Hanto's warning to keep his nose out of things he didn't need to know.

"My strongest people have better things to do and I don't trust those bottom feeders to actually accomplish what needs to be done on their own. You'll just be there to enforce my demands while they do the talking...consider it a test of your...cooperation."

Tokoyami frowned behind his mask and pondered over it, feeling both grimy and a small prick of excitement. It felt like it was coming from Dark Shadow. He could almost hear him at the back of his head trilling thrilled feelings over the potential of knocking heads.

But Tokoyami's mind immediately rushed to wonder if this was going to be their chance to get away...or if he needed to be patient a while longer. Gain trust first before making more enemies.

He decided to play it by ear. See what happened. If an opportunity arose than he'd consider taking it, but he would make no solid plans and focus on using this as a chance to waive any lingering mistrust from Chisaki.

In the meantime it was time for him to make a whole new debut. A debut he'd never thought would be a part of his professional life. His debut as a member of the Shie Hissaikai.

"When do we leave?"


	9. Chapter 9: The Ghosts in the Shadows

Tokoyami was not expecting the rush that came from walking the evening streets in his full Shie Hissaikai attire among others of the same group, covered from head to toe in black, knowing that without it all he could have been easily recognized. And the strangest part was that he didn't want to be recognized as Tokoyami, didn't want someone to rush up to him and ask him where he had been. Even if he wasn't known as a traitor by everyone who had known him. He was long since past looking to be found and rescued.

His persona was to be unapproachable now, to keep everyone at a distance. If Chisaki was untrusting, Tokoyami was as much the same now. The villains had hurt him, the Shie Hissaikai were shady, and the old life he had known and everyone in it viewed him in an irredeemable light. He only had himself and Dark Shadow now and that was all he needed.

The meeting they had been sent to have with a smaller group of street dealers was held in the backstreets of town. Tokoyami had never been to this part of the city and it felt like he was seeing the world he once knew through a different colored lense. In a literal sense he was, but that wasn't why it felt so much like an evil twin.

The interactions were intense and Tokoyami watched the leader's men closely. As closely as his eyes would allow him.

There seemed to be dispute over fair pricing of their product and the leader of the dealers was overly cocky about it. Perhaps he was too young and stupid to know who he was dealing with. But he looked to be at least four years older than Tokoyami and even he knew better.

When a reconciliation was apparently not going to be met, Tokoyami dropped his blinders in preparation for a fight in the same minute that the toughest of the dealer's guys made a move at Galileo, the Shie Hissaikai running this operation. Dark Shadow coursed from him and with his enveloping presence, Tokoyami could practically see his surroundings through him.

Blood pumped like a geyser through Tokoyami's veins as he lunged into action. Dark Shadow wrapped over him in a broader, more brick wall-like version of his Abyssal Black Body move and came between the attacker and their Shie Hissaikai companions who stood at their backs.

There was pure malicious delight in Dark Shadows cackling laugh as they crashed into the large man and threw him back. He was dazed a moment by the impact, but charged them in the next second ready to take them down in full force. But Dark Shadow swept off of Tokoyami, absorbing the darkness around them to magnify himself and grab the man, launching him full body across the room.

Tokoyami could feel the pure, unbridled thrill pouring from Dark Shadow as he went at the rest of the dealers who stood to fight them and even those that didn't. There wasn't even a chance for the other gang members to join in the fight and Tokoyami did very little in action himself.

Instead he dumped all of his energy and excitement into Dark Shadow, planting his feet and creating a firm structure for the creature to manifest from while he unleashed pure hell on the five or so people who screamed and begged and attempted to run for their lives.

In less than a minute Dark Shadow had beaten each of them so hard into the ground that there was a crack in the pavement beneath them. There was nothing but open mouths and uncertainty behind them as their associates took in the devastation that had been unleashed.

Tokoyami barely managed to reign Dark Shadow back in before he went back at the first guy, slowly lifting to his feet. He could feel the intent to kill in Dark Shadow and it panged fear through Tokoyami so strong that his will overpowered Dark Shadows rampage.

He breathed panicked relief when Dark Shadow returned to his body and shook a little where he stood, realizing how close he'd come to losing control of Dark Shadow and possibly having a death on his hands. That was just too far. He couldn't let that happen. This wasn't like in the woods, he still had some control here and however much he was changing his methods to allow Dark Shadow more freedom, that was a step he wasn't willing to allow him to take.

The others offered half fearful praise as Tokoyami stepped away, stalking away from the scene as they concluded whatever was left of their business and Tokoyami tried to calm himself. Tried to reel himself back in.

His heart was racing and his hands were shaking with a need to keep fighting. His fight or flight was still in full swing and it was dead set on fight. But damn it if wasn't the most euphoric feeling in the world.

They'd decimated that entire group in moments and walked away like it was nothing. If nothing else he could feel the earned respect he'd gained from his new comrades. They wouldn't challenge him.

When Tokoyami made it to the end of the street, he stayed in the shadows but looked out on the city in front of him, bustling with life and no idea of what had just happened in the darkness of its back alleys. He felt unequivocally powerful and swelled with pride.

It didn't even occur to him to think of making an escape. He was simply high on the rush of crushing his enemies, of displaying his power and being recognized for it.

It blinded him so hard he almost missed the familiar face that was walking by on the sidewalk in front of him. Almost didn't catch the unmistakable red of his hair that stood out like a beacon on the dim streets.

That was the moment it occured to Tokoyami how close he was to UA. He should have known he might have seen some of his old classmates, but it wasn't what had been on his mind.

If Tokoyami hadn't been certain before, the loudness of his voice confirmed it was Kirishima. His arm was waving in the air, trying to flag down somebody who was getting away from him and Tokoyami couldn't help peeking out of the shadows to see who it was. And he might have guessed it was Sero and Kaminari if he'd been thinking...but seeing them so...normal, after all this time and everything that he'd gone through and that had been said about him...it hit differently.

His eyes were wide on them as they grouped up and continued along, chattering loudly and casually with each other.

Tokoyami's heart was in his shoes. It was impossible to put into words what if felt like to glimpse his old life coexisting with his new one like this. All he knew was that he was compelled to return to the shadows and was propelled by the need to follow them.

He spared a moment of thought to the other Shie Hissaikai finishing business down the alley, of the fact that it would raise suspicion with him if he ran off, that he could be jeopardizing the fragile trust he was building with Chisaki after just handling his business for him...but his feet told him to move and they did.

Keeping well to the shadows and out of sight he could hear Dark Shadow's hissing whispers. Everything from, "bad idea" to "shall we hunt them then?" Tokoyami had to keep shrugging him off and kept his focus on keeping up and not being seen. He didn't know what he was going to do or what he was trying to find out. He just knew he needed to see where they were going and hear what they were saying.

They seemed to be chattering about meaningless things. At least, things that were now meaningless to Tokoyami. He heard the word "work studies" and "internships" and various terms regarding hero work and Tokoyami's tongue soured on every instance of it as they meandered obliviously, grabbing snacks and setting a course back towards UA.

Tokoyami stayed on their trail when the bustle of the city drifted away, heart pounding in his chest in an anguished feeling he'd thought he'd left in the room with the blinding lights.

He hesitated when he noticed Kirishima look over his shoulder and falter a moment, glancing around. Sero and Kaminari asked him what was wrong, but he just brushed it off as a weird feeling, though Tokoyami could see his guard was up. Maybe he wasn't as dim witted as he'd thought him. Or maybe he'd just improved that much in the time Tokoyami had been away.

Everything in Tokoyami's heart told him that this was foolish to keep following, that he'd be noticed and it was dangerous to risk being seen. That if he wasn't going to rush to them and tell them he was alive and explain to them that they were wrong about him, then he needed to bow out right now.

And he couldn't do the former. He...couldn't trust them. They'd turn him in and Chisaki was right...his future was tarnished even if he could be proven innocent. And what if they wouldn't listen? What if Kaminari threw enough electricity at him to fry his own brain before Tokoyami even had a chance to speak?

He swallowed hard as his feet kept silently carrying him.

They couldn't be trusted, but he had to follow them.

There was something off about the night air, something wrong. There wasn't a sound besides their voices, but somehow he just knew that something was there. That there was a weight lingering at their backs. A daunting feeling encroaching like shadows.

Kirishima did his best to shake it off since the other guys didn't seem to get the same instinct, but it was hard to let go of. His eyes drew back behind him a lot, trying to catch sight of a movement or sound. He knew he looked crazy or paranoid, but it was a hard feeling to ignore.

"Ugh!" Kaminari was whining with exasperation, swallowing the last of his snacks, "It's not fair! You guys are so lucky!"

"I'm honestly not that envious," Sero was rubbing the back of his neck, playing nonchalant, "It's hard enough keeping up with school without an internship."

Kirishima groaned on the thought of how much work he had to do once they got back to the dorms. "Don't remind me," he whined back, "I have so much work to catch up on...the girls aren't getting behind like this! Why is it easier for them? I wonder if Midoriya will want to study…"

"Get Bakugo to study with you," Kaminari suggested which received a grit, sharp toothed look in response.

Kirishima rubbed over old sore spots on his head in memory of previous tutoring sessions. "I'd rather not. I can't have a concussion and be sharp for Fat Gum at the same time. We have big stuff going on!"

Sero snorted, kicking a rock aside. "Yeah...big stuff…"

Kirishima rolled his eyes, but knew they were just jealous that it was entirely very true. The agency he was working with was a part of a massive, multiple agency wide investigation working on bringing down the yakuza organization, the Shie Hissaikai. He truly didn't know how useful he would be to them, but he wanted to do his absolute most. Midoriya had been so enthusiastic since his agency was working on it too. He wanted to match that energy and drive, be as vibrant and amazing as his senpai kept saying he was.

But he couldn't say any of it to his classmates. It was all top secret and even if he tried to vent and be vague about it they wouldn't understand. All the more reason to study with Midoriya. He, at least, knew what was going on on both sides of their young hero lives. He could commiserate the weariness of it all.

That creeping feeling suddenly returned and Kirishima was looking around himself anxiously again. The other two ignored it this time.

"Speaking of internships do you think that one with Hawks is open, you know, now that…"

Kirishima and Sero both clenched up at Kaminari's thoughtless words. Only upon seeing their sharp, soured reactions did he seem to realize what he'd said. He dropped his head and bit lip, hunching his shoulders to really think about who he was talking about.

"I hadn't even thought about that of it," Sero muttered, "...there was a traitor working side by side with the number 3 hero...that's scary to think about…"

Kirishima didn't like hearing that. Didn't like the blatant way Tokoyami was talked about nowadays. So harsh and bitter on the tongues of the emo boy's former friends. There was remorse a lot of the time too, the feeling of having lost a friend. But the most rampant feeling was betrayal. Its what ebbed off of everyone at UA when Tokoyami was mentioned. Everyone except a few.

From Shoji all Kirishima saw was anger, though it didn't feel directed towards their lost friend. Todoroki was hard to read as always and Bakugo just seemed to shrink on the topic, seeming prickly. Everyone knew why. He'd accidentally killed the mud creature that had taken the likeness and talents of their old friend. Whether it was the Tokoyami they had known or not, it was easy to see that it haunted him. That he didn't know how to feel with everything that came to light afterwards and dealt with it by flying off the handles and secluding himself. And Kirishima just didn't have the time right now to try and make him snap out of it.

Only from Midoriya did Kirishima get the same feeling that he felt himself. That he didn't want to believe what they had been told about Tokoyami, that he still had hope.

But it was a hard thing to say to so many hurt people. So he said nothing. Neither of them did. Not even to each other.

"Well...anyway," Kaminari tapped his fingers nervously and tried to segway away from the topic, "I just meant that I want to get into the action with you guys. I feel like I'm always missing out! We missed all the fighting at camp and you and Midoriya and Todoroki, and Yaomomo, and Iida went off and broke a bunch of rules to rescue Bakugo and didn't even get in trouble for it! I want to go out and get in the middle of some trouble too! That's how you get noticed!"

Kirishima was about to retort at how ridiculous Kaminari was being, that the attention it got wasn't good attention, but in that moment he could have sworn he heard movement behind him and his feet planted as an uneasy shiver trailed his spine. There was something terribly strange in the air tonight and he didn't like it.

Sero and Kaminari glared back at him, stopping. "Dude, keep up!"

"We have to be back indoors in thirty minutes or Aizawa is going to kill us," Kaminari added, "You're acting jumpy."

Kirishima waved it off and shook his head. "I'm fine. And you shouldn't want to emulate that," he started walking again, faster in hopes of getting away from that lingering presence, "Even you guys almost got kicked out just for knowing that it happened. But…" Kirishima sighed to himself, hands in pockets, feeling himself grow strangely serious, "I'd do it again if I had to."

He gulped past a lump in his throat to think of everything that had happened over the last week. Of the tumult their lives were in and the added loss of a former friend and his own feelings about how those things were being left.

"We don't leave one of our own behind…"

Tokoyami had to stop. He could go any further. His impulse to stalk and observe died down into a crushing, overpowering weight. His legs almost wanted to give out.

He crept out of earshot and ran, a billow of darkness against the night until he could slip behind a building and cover himself entirely in its shadow. His gut was twisted into fearsome knots and he gripped it tightly as he slumped down against the brick wall, pushing his hood back and pulling the mask off to breathe the night air in cleanly.

It was hard to believe his own ears. He didn't know most of what they were talking about, but the last few things that Kaminari and Kirishima had said were clear as day in his ears.

"We don't leave one of our own behind."

Was he not one of their own?

And to hear that from Kirishima of all people...he had never heard something so harsh from his so very positive mouth as to chant about his gusto to save his one of his friends, while having forgotten to save another. But maybe that part made some sense. Kirishima was close to Bakugo. He'd want to save him at the risk of himself.

But it wasn't like him or any of the others mentioned not to want to rescue everyone, not just that disrespectful brat. Especially not Iida. He spoke so highly of his rank as class representative and his responsibility over his classmates, only to leave Tokoyami for dead or worse?

So much worse.

And Midoriya, Todoroki and Yaoyorozu too.

They'd all been right there, had broken rules and risked their lives to go on a rescue mission. Only to leave Tokoyami behind and call it a victory. To leave him to...that torment.

Shigaraki had been right...of all the horrible, stupid things...he'd been right. Nobody cared.

He pushed the goggles up from his face and stared into the nothingness.

This was their fault.

Tears hit shaking gloved hands.

Those five...they left him to Shigaraki's torture, left him to fight tooth and nail just to stave off death...to resort to aligning himself with the yakuza to foster this thing called survival.

"He hasn't gotten too far yet," Dark Shadow emerged to curl around his shoulder which was jolting with frustrated, rage filled sobs, "We could break him...it could be a fun challenge to bust through his quirk. I'll let you have the satisfaction of the killing blow…?"

Tokoyami didn't swat Dark Shadow away and didn't even tell him to quell his homicidal instincts this time. He couldn't even say he disagreed with them right now.

All of those bitter feelings turned to venom in his veins and the line between his former friends and the villains who had abused him was blurring away. It boiled like pure hatred in his blood and his furious tears sent his fist slamming into the wall behind him. The wall cracked and the material of his gloves cut through, his knuckles coming back bloodied. But he didn't feel a thing.

If he hadn't been so much like a lead balloon he would have let that anger unleash into Dark Shadow, would have stood and followed the creature's sadistic desires, would have rushed out to attack and destroy the people he used to call his friends in the pure spiteful heat of his irrational rage. But he couldn't make his legs move.

Adrenaline was run dry and the heavy blanket of hopelessness draped over him.

Tonight he'd let them walk away, slip back into the safety of UA and their dorm walls, back to their lives of schoolwork and hero training. He couldn't promise tomorrow.

There were five people whose names he'd heard tonight that encompassed his every ounce of hatred, names that found their way into a mental list already occupied by Shigaraki, Toga, and Dabi. They needed to pay. He'd make all of them pay.

Whatever he had to do to be strong enough or skilled enough or cunning enough. They'd regret leaving him for dead.


	10. Chapter 10: Arcane Rising

When he found his way back to the other Shie Hissaikai he smelled blood in the air. More than that, he smelled death.

The leader of the dealers was shaking in his soiled pants as Galileo sent him on his way two men shorter than when he'd arrived. He flicked a butterfly knife around in his hand casually, flinging tiny drops of blood around as he did and Tokoyami flinched at the sight, thinking instantly of Toga.

The survivors gathered up the well brutalized bodies and drug them off, casting back terrified glances at Tokoyami especially and an enraged one towards Galileo. They got away as quickly as possible.

Tokoyami knew that Galileo and the other men had killed those guys while he'd been away. He knew he'd left them incapacitated for that to happen. That people had died tonight and he'd played a part in it. Knew that the people he now stood with had just killed in cold blood.

But he didn't feel a thing. He couldn't say he cared. Couldn't say he'd spared it more than a moments thought. He just wanted to get back to base so he could figure out his next step. Plot how he was going to start crossing names off of that list he was growing in his head.

Galileo informed him as they gathered up and made their way out of the dark alley that they'd come to a new arrangement with the dealers and then asked with a heated hiss where Tokoyami had run off too. Even if his face hadn't been entirely masked, Galileo wouldn't have gotten more than a brick wall expression as a response. He didn't even bother to answer him, just kept walking.

Instead he turned a question to Galileo, finding he was at the most centered, calm place he had ever been in his life. Somehow resolved and clear headed all while lusting for blood. It was strangely euphoric.

"What do they sell for us?"

He knew the question wasn't one he was supposed to ask, but caution was for those who still had a remaining ounce of fear in them.

It was obvious that Tokoyami's confidence took Galileo by surprise and he looked about to snap at him for being generally insubordinate, but thought better of it, perhaps remembering what Tokoyami and Dark Shadow had done to the dealers earlier that night. He grumbled, but answered Tokoyami.

"They sell quirk enhancers," he said as they came to the entrance to the maze that was their underground network, "Not the good stuff, some watered down crap that gives about a thirty minute boost. Sells like candy these days...everyone wants to be the big shot who managed to take down a pro."

The back of Tokoyami's mind chirped about how unethical that was to be selling street drugs and how dangerous the substance sounded. But it was a small voice now. He barely acknowledged it anymore. His priorities were fixed on something far more encompassing than a moral code that had left him hanging in his hour of need.

"How long does the good stuff last?" he asked, unsure why he wanted to know more, but feeling certain that the information would be useful.

"A couple hours at best," Galileo was eyeing him with annoyance.

"And does it actually work?"

Galileo pushed his mask off of his face and popped a cigarette in his mouth. He lit it, all while frowning curiosity at the enigmatic dark figure that accompanied them.

"Oh yeah," he breathed out smoke into the air, "On one of those stimulants an untrained housewife could knock a pro hero to his knees."

Tokoyami didn't ask anymore questions, just logged all of that away.

When they got back to base Tokoyami tried to make straight for his room, but Galileo stopped him, told him that he needed to come with him to make his report to the boss. Tokoyami's mind was already onto the next thing and he wasn't keen on continuing to talk about the very small event of scaring some drug dealers. And he especially didn't want to have to talk to Chisaki. He was still on edge around him.

But Galileo wasn't taking no for an answer this time and Tokoyami begrudgingly agreed. The rest of the men went off to wind down, but the two of them went straight to a side of the base Tokoyami wasn't used to being. Mainly because they went above ground. And not to that backyard area where he had trained in the night, but into the house that settled the property above. The place that was the front for their organization.

Galileo tossed out his fifth cigarette and pulled his mask back over his face as they entered, leading Tokoyami through the well guarded, stylish house. The whole place screamed money and it had a certain refined appeal to it. He couldn't say it wasn't impressive.

In a back room that had a very businesslike feel and attire to it, they found Chisaki speaking with one of his men. One of the ones he actually let near him. There were very few of those.

Among the Shie Hissaikai there many masked faces, but there were a handful that stood out. People like Mimic and Chronostasis. Those who made it obvious that they were there out of a more direct sense of loyalty. Loyalty to him, not an organization. Someone like Galileo was not in that category. It was obvious he wasn't Chisaki's biggest fan, but he followed him nonetheless because he was the boss, not because he was a person who he cared about.

Chisaki made them wait at the door until he finished his business with Mimic and sent him on his way. Tokoyami didn't try to listen in because he didn't care. The Shie Hissaikai's business was not his priority, he had things to do.

Galileo gave a report of the night's events, being sure to mention Tokoyami's effortless take down of their attackers, though he also didn't fail to mention that the teen had disappeared there for a while. He turned a glaring eyes towards Tokoyami as he said it too, but there was nothing to be seen on the cloaked and masked face and nothing to read from his body. He didn't shift or even move. He was a statue if not for the flutter of his cloak with the blowing of the A/C.

There was no great enthusiasm for a job well done or even a follow up question to the report. Instead Chisaki just directed Galileo to his next assignment and ordered him to leave.

Tokoyami's foot slid back to follow, but Chisaki's voice stopped him.

"I didn't dismiss you," his tone was cold and even, and Tokoyami's throat went dry to think that it reminded him of Todoroki...which just made him think about the new names that had just made his black list that night.

Tokoyami went still and waited for Galileo to finally finish leaving, refusing to speak first. Chisaki wasn't trying to play games, though and spoke the moment the door shut behind Galileo.

"An effortless victory was it?" he pushed, a challenge in his tone.

Something prideful welled up Tokoyami's chest and his jaw clenched, saying nothing in response. It caused Chisaki to glare annoyance at him.

"Was it actually so effortless...Dark Shadow?"

It took Tokoyami by surprise that Chisaki had posed his question to the creature directly, finding himself oddly humbled because of it. It grated over his skin, but the message was clear. Chisaki wasn't patient or in the habit of humoring moody teenagers.

Dark Shadow lifted from Tokoyami's body and stayed just behind him, possessing the air he occupied with confidence and magnitude. The things Tokoyami had felt and come to understand that night were magnified in Dark Shadow. His anger and betrayal and fear and hatred all expanded the creature and even Chisaki's eye went a touch wider at the sight of him at this level of power.

"I could have destroyed a hundred more," Dark Shadow's vibrato shook the air, "Petty thugs are beneath our abilities. If you must send us to fight then at least challenge us."

The boss stared hard at the creature and let his words hang there. He considered the teen and his demon closely.

"Where did you go tonight?" when Chisaki asked this he looked back to Tokoyami.

The coarse gravel of Tokoyami's voice emerged deliberately and he glared through his goggles, knowing that the only emotions that could be perceived from him would be through his words.

"We were following someone," he said plainly, "I saw an old friend and I was...curious."

"Then why come back?" Chisaki tilted his head, "I don't pretend to think you remain in our presence out of any reason besides desperation and fear or simple inability to leave."

"That life is behind me," Tokoyami bit back shortly, "And don't presume to know my intentions, boss." He used his title like a curse and Chisaki's eyebrow went up a moment...almost impressed by the bite in his tone. "The Shie Hissaikai are a tool to get what I want, just like what I am to you. And I agree with Dark Shadow...if we're such an asset to you than use us like it. As long as you're still willing to keep up your end we will take whatever assignment you desire to challenge us with."

There was a cock in Chisaki's head and consideration in his eyes. "Shigaraki will be yours when we're through with him," he assured, "That hasn't changed."

"Not just Shigaraki," Tokoyami growled, vibrating the inside of the long mask, "There are others...you promised you would lend resources and assistance with my...vendettas, will you stick to your word?"

There was a bored head roll as Chisaki crossed his arms. "I'm not one of them, am I?"

Tokoyami huffed, but it was slightly amused, his head tilting just a little. "Not currently."

Chisaki shrugged a shoulder, his blue eyes tilting mesmerizingly in the lamplight. "Then fine by me. As long as it doesn't interfere with my operations, take whoever you want and kill whoever you like. It'll be less bodies to dispose of for myself."

The teens head lifted proudly and Dark Shadow made a satisfied hiss in the air, before Chisaki pushed away from the desk and stalked towards them. His instincts told him to take a defensive stance, but consciously he thought it looked weak, so he remained very still as Chisaki looked slightly downward at him.

He was an adult and Tokoyami only fifteen so their height difference was reasonably staunch. It was easy to feel small in his shadow, but Dark Shadow's close loom well made up for it. The yakuza boss leaned down to speak closely and his tone became deeply serious, no fear of the black creature hanging so close and so protectively.

"But I don't offer anything for free," he said in a low voice, "Your ass belongs to me. Don't forget that when you go looking for your revenge. You'll be where I tell you to be and do what I tell you to do or our deal is done...and, as you're well aware, I don't leave loose ends."

It took every ounce of his will to keep from shivering under his intimidating threat, but Tokoyami managed to keep his eye contact behind the guise of his goggles. Dark Shadow made an affirmative sound and responded to the feelingTokoyami was sending out to him, drawing back into the boy until he disappeared.

Tokoyami nodded and swallowed his pride to reply. "Sounds like we've come to an agreement."

Chisaki made a sound in his throat and pulled back, eyeing Tokoyami, eyes narrow and almost tired looking. He held him in that stare for a good moment before waving him off with a brush of his hand.

"I'll send for you if I need you, Tokoyami," he said and turned back to his business.

But Tokoyami didn't move, his brow furrowed together, his feathers ruffling. His feet planted stubbornly again and he didn't know what force had possessed him that night, but it seemed to enjoy the danger of taunting the people who were his most apparent threats.

"Don't call me that anymore," Tokoyami said coarsely, "I told you that life is behind me. I can't allow myself to leave any ties of that sort."

"That's pretty dramatic," Chisaki had amused boredom in his voice, not even looking back at him, "But I guess it suits you. You've got the whole arcane plague doctor persona all over you. I guess that's what I get for letting a teenager into the Shie Hissaikai."

Tokoyami was more than rightly perturbed by his demeaning talk, but didn't let his frustrations show. His stance relaxed into something more casual and he thought hard on what he wanted to say. He didn't want to be called Tokoyami anymore because that didn't feel like a person he could relate to. It wasn't him anymore. That was a different lifetime. But he hadn't given anyone anything else to call him. Most of the men he was around called him "New Guy" or "Rookie" or "that demon kid" to the guys he'd beaten in a fight. Hanto knew his real name. Chisaki's upper ranked guys knew, but that was it. He'd like to keep it that way.

But he'd have to give them something to call him instead.

"In your organization you use codenames like heroes and villains do," Tokoyami observed, getting a glare from Chisaki, no doubt over being compared to professional quirk users like that, "You yourself go by Overhaul. You can just call me something like that. I don't need a real name."

There was distinct irritation in Chisaki's stance when he looked back to Tokoyami, seeming to wonder why the kid hadn't left yet when he'd already dismissed him.

"Fine," he said with a frown in his voice, "Didn't those guys call you Reaper before?"

Tokoyami scoffed. "Fools. My attire is daunting, but not that of a grim reaper."

Chisaki rolled his eyes and Tokoyami really should have been more scared that Chisaki would kill him out of pure annoyance, but he was thinking hard about this, taking it seriously. This was a big deal. Tokoyami didn't know where his life was going or what he wanted to do outside of his vendettas, so it made his vengeful drive his only perceivable life goal. He couldn't be Tokoyami anymore if he was going to adopt this future, but who he was going to be instead felt like it would define his path from there out.

"I said before you looked like an arcane plague doctor," Chisaki threw it out into the air.

"Arcane," Tokoyami said it and it felt strangely right, "A word meaning mysterious and understood by only a few." He nodded and felt a burst of excitement coil in his gut, "It fits."

"Great," Chisaki sighed, "Now get out and leave me the hell alone, Arcane."

There was a grin behind Tokoyami's mask. He gave a nod to the boss and finally left him to his lonesome, mind reeling back over his new commitments, new goals, new name. The new feeling of interest in the danger that was to come of his future in the Shie Hissaikai, without apprehensions, without fearing that he might have to actually hurt someone. It was strangely freeing to truly understand that he didn't care. That the only thing he cared about was staying alive and exacting justice on those who wronged him.

He went back to his room and stripped out of his attire except for the goggles so that he could still see what he was doing. With the blood coursing quickly through his system he found an inky black pen and went to a clear space of wall. He sensed Dark Shadow grinning over his shoulder with a deep throated chuckle of approval as Tokoyami's hands drew out onto the wall what had been forming in his mind.

One by one he set his goal, put it into his vision, to keep his motivation strong and clear every day. To see it with his very eyes.

He dropped the pen and stared, a sensation on the tips of his fingers like he was ready to break something, because when he looked at this list of names, his blood boiled and his every rage filled desire announced itself clear.

Shigaraki Tomura

All For One

Toga Himiko

Dabi

Kirishima Eijiro

Midoriya Izuku

Iida Tenya

Yaoyorozu Momo

Todoroki Shoto

One way or another they would all face judgement for what they had done or failed to do.


	11. Chapter 11: The Killing Blow

A/N: hey guys! I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and supporting this story so far! I haven't been good to responding to your reviews, but I do read them and they seriously warm my heart! I feel so blessed by the response to this story and I hope I continue to entertain! I post on AO3 as well and I'm used to the chapter notes they have over there so I haven't really talked to you guys directly like I have with them over there. But this is a project I was working on for NaNoWriMo and since that's over I might be slacking off a bit on writing updates, but please bear with me and I promise I'll try to keep going and giving you some worthwhile content that I hope doesn't bore you completely! Again THANK YOU GUYS FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART FOR THE LOVE AND THE INCREDIBLE REVIEWS! Y'all are the best!

Not a day went by without Tokoyami spending an ungodly amount of time training his new form of fighting. He strained every limit to his senses, pushing them to grow and expand like a well worked muscle. His actual muscles grew too. There was a lot to gain back after going for what was likely more than a week without food and trapped in a confined space all that time.

And he started to find that the more focused his rage, the more precise Dark Shadow became. The first few times he drove his attention to his freshest wound and its more prevalent source. He imagined that the equipment he tore to shreds was the body of his once friend Kirishima. The next time it was Dabi when he started to feel the sting of his burns alight again. Each practice he gave himself a new goal and a new person to picture.

Dark Shadow had truly never felt so powerful.

But when they were given a new assignment and they were tested in a real life dire situation, Tokoyami found that his strength was good, but not good enough.

They grappled with a talented gang of thugs that didn't want to understand what their place was in the hierarchy of the underworld. They didn't want to accept that their little group wasn't running things and for that they had to be put in their place. Chisaki had granted the use of lethal force, but Tokoyami still held back. He didn't stop any of the others from ending lives, but there was something about a killing blow that made him freeze up when he came to it.

He received frustration and endless complaint from Dark Shadow for stopping him once again, but Tokoyami stayed firm to his decision, until a guy he'd refused to kill came at him from behind. His quirk was strong and he crashed an electric force into Tokoyami, Dark Shadow using his own being as a shield. It still threw them both back and even Dark Shadow seemed dazed by it.

Tokoyami spun back on him as the man threw another attack. The rest of their fellow Shie Hissaikai were busy with their own fights, so Tokoyami was on his own with this.

In the darkness of his lack of sight Tokoyami listened and felt, but found a certain amount of his senses were distorted by adrenaline. On the other hand, it made him act on instinct over process and when Dark Shadow wrapped over him he didn't hesitate. Dark Shadow's cloak over his limbs guided the swing of the claws that the creature created at the ends of his hands and Tokoyami gave over to his trust in the creature and instinct.

The guy did not go down easily and when they finally had him held face down in the dirt Tokoyami was panting.

"Finish him this time," Dark Shadow crowed around his head like a stereo, "He almost killed you because you wouldn't let me end him. Don't make that mistake again."

Tokoyami said nothing, not moving to take action and not pulling away. He didn't want to even then, but Dark Shadow was more prepared than Tokoyami thought to take matters into his own claws.

His hands shook and sweated as they held the beaten man down and Tokoyami struggled to find his voice and strength to tell the creature no. Dark Shadow's claws tugged on Tokoyami's arms, still using him as his frame and pulling him to do what he said. He forced Tokoyami's hands to wrap around the man's neck and used the boys fingers to curl his own claws around and bury them into the flesh of their attacker's throat.

He'd been beaten so thoroughly he couldn't fight them except to gargle in pain as his neck was impaled and sliced open in four gaping lines. Blood poured over Tokoyami's hand and when Dark Shadow pulled off of his body, he left Tokoyami's gloved fingers inside the wounds of the man now dead beneath him.

Tokoyami was frozen there for a good moment, stricken and unable to move. There was no remorse for loss of life, no regret that the man under him was dead, but a physical disgust at the gory reality of what he had done. The action made him as sick as he thought it would, but all the while there was a light feeling in his brain and he didn't know whether he wanted to rip the rest of the man's throat out with his bare hands or collapse and never move again.

Instead what came was a completely numb feeling and a single tear cutting the corner of his eye as he stood from the body, wiped the blood onto his pants and walked away. The fight was already won and he'd played more than his part in it.

He held everything together until after they'd returned and given their report to the boss and made it back to their room after cleaning up. In that moment he yanked back his hood and ripped his mask from his face.

"Why did you make me do that?" Tokoyami shouted into the dark room, embodied with more shadow than furniture. They rarely turned the lights on, to keep themselves constantly exposed to their element and the area where they needed to improve.

Dark Shadow buzzed in the air beside him, crossing his abyssal arms as he watched Tokoyami pace the room.

"Because you would never have done it on your own," Dark Shadow sounded annoyed, "You need to understand that your enemies must die if you are truly to defeat them. You saw that tonight! It was proven. Leaving him simply beaten was not enough. He could have killed you for all your misplaced mercy."

Tokoyami's hand clenched and unclenched in front of his unsteady vision, having very little clarity even through the goggles in the blackened room. The gloves were off, but he could still feel the heat of the man's flesh as his fingers were buried in his throat.

"I told you I didn't want to so many times," Tokoyami hissed, letting his rage boil back up in his chest and allowing frustrated tears to burn his eyes.

"And yet you say you wish to kill these people," Dark Shadow referenced the wall covered in names.

"I...I never said I was going to kill them…" Tokoyami swallowed, feeling his brain going fuzzy and unsure of truly what his intentions were at the moment.

"The implications were clear," Dark Shadow insisted, "And if you do not intend to kill them than this has all been for nothing. What sort of plan do you have otherwise? Beat them up a bit and leave them to live out their merry little lives? Or maybe you'd like to turn yourself over to their mercy, to their twisted system of justice that called you a spy and a traitor."

"No!" Tokoyami spat into the darkness and threw a punch into the wall.

The room went deathly quiet as Dark Shadow waited and filled the air with his presence. The cloaking darkness and Tokoyami's rage were fueling him immensely and even Tokoyami felt a bit cowed to be beside him.

"I want them dead," he said it and the words made his heart skip a beat, having never truly heard them aloud before, "I want to be the one to kill them...but I've never been a killer. Until tonight I've never...the feeling of taking a life is different than just hurting someone. It's different than knowing I set someone up for a kill. I wasn't ready…"

"Which is why I made you do it," Dark Shadow had a happy tone behind his deep intimidating bass, "The first time was always going to be the hardest and you needed help following through. Which is why your first kill couldn't be someone who used to be your friend. Your conscience would have won out."

There was pressure at Tokoyami's back, Dark Shadow's physical form hanging on his shoulders, voice right beside his ear like a shoulder demon whispering the things he knew he needed to hear, but didn't want to.

"You said you were not Tokoyami anymore," Dark Shadow said, "You are leaving that life behind to be Arcane. Your conscience must be sacrificed for that. And it was not going to truly die until you had blood on your hands. This is where you accept what we are here to do and assume the power you are capable of. If you are unwilling to take life than our goals are meaningless. So embrace the kill. Be proud of it. And the next time...you will not hold me back."

Dark Shadows primordial hands wrapped around the back of Tokoyami's and folded them in, almost gently. The creature was cold natured and it was more chilling than comforting to feel him so close, but there was true familiarity in it and it eased him in its own way. He wasn't used to warm embraces and soft hands anyway and now denied having any social comfort from the presence of people he once called friends. Maybe...still...Shoji had always felt like a good person to be around…Jiro had been fun...

No. Dark Shadow was the only friend he knew and the only one he needed. His cold nature was enough.

"You're right," he admitted to the creature in a whisper, "It had to be done...I have to accept it if we are to exact vengeance. I feel no regret for his death and I will not feel it for theirs...but I will learn to take the shot without freezing up. I'm...a killer now."

There was a satisfied chuckle by his head. "We are. You will learn to be happy about it."

Tokoyami nodded, pushing his goggles away from his face to rub the tears out of his eyes, finding that Dark Shadow's cloak of his body didn't retract as he did.

"Before that's a possibility, though," Tokoyami sighed away the tension in his chest, "We need to be stronger...that fight was...too close. They were just thugs, however strong their quirks were. We can't hope to defeat someone as strong as Dabi...especially not Todoroki if we don't become more powerful. Their fire will subdue us too quickly. And as for the others they are all incredibly strong in their own ways. They are stronger than those thugs, even those who have inferior quirks."

"And what about the one who tried to take me from you?" Dark Shadow turned them to the wall, "The one called All For One? We know what the news had said was true...it took the last of All Might's strength just to subdue him. To kill him might be impossible at our strongest. A man who takes and repurposes quirks...are you sure you're up for that challenge?"

Tokoyami grit his teeth at the name, pushing the goggles back to see it, still distorted in the darkness.

"He is in prison," Tokoyami said thoughtfully, refocusing his energy on the thrill of their hunt, pushing out the weight of the truest change in his identity; the addition of being a killer to his name, "The Shie Hissaikai look on that as his defeat, that they are now free to rise and overtake what was once his. But he is the mentor to Shigaraki and as long as the League of Villains lives there is the possibility of his rescue. The best time to defeat him would be while he is immobile and incarcerated...but then the security they must have in place around him...it really is such a pipe dream, isn't it?"

Dark Shadow pushed his head to look lower down the list. "Then start small. Your agreement with Chisaki says you cannot touch the League until he has finished using them. The girl and the fire user are not options as Shigaraki is not an option. But we shouldn't have to wait until Chisaki's designs are met to begin. There is much we can still do."

Tokoyami closely assessed the names of his former classmates and swallowed hard. It suddenly felt very real and daunting, but his chest filled with excitement.

"We cannot fight Todoroki," he said, shaking his head, "Not yet."

"Let's break the hardener," Dark Shadow hissed sadistically, "I want to see him crack."

Tokoyami shuddered at the thought and shook his head. "No. Iida."

"Why?" Dark Shadow hummed.

Tokoyami turned his eyes to the ground and frowned deeply.

"We were all his responsibility. He is the most at fault."

Dark Shadow simply nodded approval, but drifted around to face Tokoyami dead on. He met the gleam of yellow eyes and held them.

"Will we be strong enough?"

Tokoyami ruffle his feathers and pulled a smile. "We will. But we need to talk to Galileo."


	12. Chapter 12: A Risky Deal

"Quirk enhancers?" Galileo glared, "Why on earth do you think I'll give you that?"

Tokoyami was shifting impatiently, staring down Galileo with annoyance. An expression that could not be seen behind the cloak and mask. But Dark Shadow was present and at his side, arms crossed at the man lounging casually at an empty card table. He'd been playing with a few others when Tokoyami had walked in, but a deep throated demand sent the others out of the room at a word. The amount of power he held simply with fear over the other gang members held a deep set satisfaction in both Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. Enough of them had seen what he could do and with plenty of them being quirkless they had reasonable caution around him.

Galileo didn't show any fear, though. He had a cocky attitude that made Tokoyami want to twist his arms off, but he held off because he needed something from him and because it might not go over well with his new boss.

"You'll give me that because you want to keep your throat in your neck," Tokoyami said on the choppy depth of his voice, making the threat seem all too real.

But Galileo remained stubborn. "You won't do it," he huffed, "You're just as afraid of Overhaul as the rest of us and you already know he doesn't appreciate infighting."

At the moment whatever Chisaki's real opinion was of Tokoyami ripping that smug look off of Galileo's face meant less than nothing to him. He was in a hurry and had no time for these games.

He'd spoken with Hanto earlier and relayed his goal. Hanto was as always Tokoyami's most reliable source and relied on asset. They had built a rapport and whatever amount of trust Tokoyami was capable of. From the start if he needed something or wanted to find information on anything Hanto was who to turn to. He was far from the strongest or most important person in the Shie Hissaikai, but he had the right connections and had developed the right trusts for Tokoyami's purposes.

He deployed someone to watch their target closely, no mention of why or who it was for. But the information that came back told Tokoyami he had to act fast. He'd thought that there was going to be a degree of patience involved, with plotting and careful strategizing, but the opportunity simply couldn't be missed.

Iida Tenya was out on an extra curricular school project that evening, a one man field trip of sorts to the Developmental Sciences Museum. Tokoyami already knew why. They had the foremost knowledge on "speedsters" of all quirk types in Japan and he was studying to improve his own quirk by educating himself on techniques and skills of others in his quirk-class. Ever the diligent student.

But it meant he would be going home alone too and the path back to the train station would provide Tokoyami the perfect opening. He could catch him off guard and by himself.

It was perfect...if Galileo would just cooperate. He didn't want to take chances on this. If there was a quirk enhancer they could use to bring Dark Shadow's strength to fuller heights then their victim wouldn't stand a chance.

Tokoyami swallowed back his considerable pride and growled into his words.

"Fine," he said to Galileo, well into his third chainsmoke of the day, "Favor for favor."

That piqued Galileo's interest and his eyebrow quirked up. He hummed as he thought about it, cigarette smoke pouring from his lips. "That's more like it. There's something you could do for me."

"What is it?"

"Doesn't work like that," Galileo dropped his feet on the table, leaning back, "I'll get you a supply. You get one now, I get my favor, then you get the rest. And I'll tell you what I want you to do when I want it done."

His hand went out for Tokoyami to take and the teenager stared at it skeptically. He could feel Dark Shadow's warning under his skin. The creature didn't trust Galileo and Tokoyami really didn't either. But at this point Tokoyami needed that enhancer now, there was no time to try and go through Chisaki, and there was very little he still had apprehensions about with doing for a favor or anything else.

He shook the hand and made sure to squeeze incredibly hard. It got an annoyed wince from Galileo and he shook it out when he pulled his hand back, eyeing Tokoyami like he'd done it on purpose, which he had.

The guy shot up after that and left the room, telling Tokoyami to wait.

In a moment he came back with a metal syringe and tossed it to Tokoyami, falling back in his seat.

"Send my guys back in on your way out, won't you?" he grabbed his cards and went right back to his game, ignoring Tokoyami now that their business was completed.

He didn't give Galileo a response as he rushed out, barely catching the man yelling out after him. "We'll talk soon."

No one stopped him from leaving. He had access to their underground system without a question and that was really when Tokoyami fully realized that he was Shie Hissaikai now. They saw him as one of them. He wasn't a prisoner anymore.

Once they were in the shadows of the tunnel system Tokoyami took a deep breath and pushed the needle into his arm, going slow and feeling the substance inside automatically release through the needle and into his bloodstream. The pain of a prick was nothing to him anymore and he tossed aside the syringe as soon as it emptied.

It shook through him in a split second and he almost doubled over with how hard it hit, knocking the wind out of him as every sense in his body became vibrantly alive. Dark Shadow writhed inside of him, like a beast trying to burst from its cage. But Tokoyami held him down and kept him inside while he fought through the way his body seemed to be expanding inside itself. It wasn't time for him to make that appearance yet.

In a few moments the rocking wave of its initial impact settled and Tokoyami stood straight, eyes dilated and body coursed with a high of raw energy. This was exactly what he needed.

He ran through the underground system with speed he'd never felt. Dark Shadow vibrated thrill inside of his chest and screamed to be released, but Tokoyami demanded him stay down, they had to stay incognito for a bit longer.

When they emerged to the surface they found the night air. It was chill and clear and Tokoyami breathed it in like he'd never tasted air before. His senses were so heightened. He could only imagine what effect it would have on Dark Shadow.

He followed Hanto's report and kept to the back streets until he met up with their informant. He was truly inconspicuous. He didn't even where a mask or suit or anything that might distinguish him as Shie Hissaikai. As far as anyone was concerned he was just a young man on his way back from the gym...now talking with a cloaked, shadowy figure in a back street in hushed voices.

He told Tokoyami that Iida would be passing this way soon. He'd seen him leaving the museum and this was the way back to the train station. Tokoyami dismissed him, telling him that he had no more need for him and then drifted back into the shadows to wait.

Waiting was the hardest part. His energy levels made standing still impossible. He needed to do something and Dark Shadow was about to rip him apart from the inside. He was seeing red.

And finally they saw him. Like it was just a normal night. Like he wasn't a traitorous backstabbing bastard about to get his comeuppance.

His eyes were on his phone and his walk was leisurely, not using his recipro boost to make him go faster. Obviously he was abiding by the constricting rules of UA and hero laws. Not using his quirk in public even if it was ridiculous not to. To move faster wouldn't hurt anyone and yet he was forbidden from using such a practical ability outside of the school. However much it angered him at the laws, it angered him more that Iida followed it so pristinely. So perfectly.

The model student who never broke a rule.

Who had left him for dead.

When he was within reach, the visor fell and he released Dark Shadow, taking action without allowing a thought in his head to question anything. He blinded himself secondly with rage and injustice and when Dark Shadow burst from him...he truly felt like a monster.

The form he'd taken in the forest was nothing compared to this. The absolute magnitude of his most feral being couldn't match the being that he'd become in that moment under the enhancement of the drug. Tokoyami felt his every inch and movement. He didn't need to see to know what was happening. But he wished he could have seen it.

Iida was shocked by the animated darkness crashing into him and slamming him to the ground, but he recovered fast. He felt Dark Shadow's hand bash his face first and felt the crumble of his glasses.

Their victim was on his feet in an instant and alert, vision unsteadied like Tokoyami's had become without his own goggles. His recipro burst came to life...not so much a rule follower when his own life was at risk. He tried to dash away, gasping on the shock of the sudden attack.

But Tokoyami lunged after him, Dark Shadow using his body as a wall to block Iida's path. Dark Shadow's being was so large that became like a wall in front of the speedster, all while clinging around Tokoyami at the same time.

The teen was on him and Iida swung out with his leg using his quirk to boost the power. Dark Shadow pulled Tokoyami back just in time to not get hit and in the same motion propelled him back with an abyssal hand swiping out to strike their old class rep. This time they made contact, but just enough for the claws Dark Shadow extended to swipe across his shoulder and cut through his shirt and skin.

Tokoyami hadn't expected just how heightened his senses were because he smelled the tiny amount of fresh blood dripping from the wound they'd made. It jarred his mind, the scent somehow intoxicating and horrible at once. He heard clearly every shift of Dark Shadow's body and every shocked breath that left his opponent. And with the absolute size of Dark Shadow he truly felt like his own body was a part of the creature and that every amount of space he occupied was as much himself as it was the creature.

Iida had nowhere to go and Tokoyami was the human embodiment of adrenaline, rage, and drive. No thought got past his blinders and together he and Dark Shadow railed against Iida with manically violent strikes, moving fast to keep him from getting away and finally crushing his body into a fixed position on the ground.

The dark haired teen was still struggling and doing his best to fight off the force of Dark Shadow's car sized hand pressing him into cracked concrete, blood dripping from his mouth with his face and body battered.

And Tokoyami finally felt himself regain awareness of the present. Because now they had him...now he had to follow through. Now Iida had to die.

Dark Shadow didn't say anything, but he was physically pushing Tokoyami closer and dragging the thoughts through his mind. The creature was determined to make him do it and Tokoyami knew he had to. He had to kill him. That's what all of this was about. But he could feel the hot blood of the man he'd killed before, felt the tendons of his mangled flesh and thought of doing that again. It still made him sick, still made him want to freeze and run.

But not this time. Dark Shadow said he would get used to it and if he'd didn't go through with it right now his vendettas would never be satisfied. He'd be the coward that his once friends assumed him to be. Someone who'd be a spy. An underhanded bastard. They were the underhanded bastards and Iida was the worst of them.

No. He would die. He would die today. He could swallow his every gut wrenching feeling to do this. He wanted to see that his face twisted in pain and misery as he extinguished his existence. That's what he wanted. With Dark Shadow pushing him, there was no way he would hold back now.

"Why are you doing this?" Iida cried out, choking on blood and spitting it out.

Tokoyami wanted so badly to say exactly why this was happening to him. Wanted to shove in his face what he had done. Wanted him to understand that he was dying because he had abandoned one of his own. That he was a failure as a young hero.

But when he was within arms reach of the Iida, blinders having just lifted to see the face of the man he was so determined to kill, something crashed over him like a thousand pound weight. It knocked him to his knees, just a feeling of complete loss of strength. His limbs were lead and his mind fogged over as his knees hit dirt.

Like a coil snapping back, Dark Shadow shrunk away, his entire overwhelming being drawing back inside of Tokoyami in an instant and vanishing. He was suddenly alone and weak, sucking in air in ragged breaths against his damaged throat and mentally scrambling to know what was going on as he watched Iida weakly scramble away from him.

He blinked through blood and dirt, but it was obvious that there was very little that he could see without his glasses and his instincts drove him to just push his beaten body as far away from his attacker as possible.

Iida's reactions were good and the first thing he did, while pushing himself with pained groans to his feet, was retrieve his phone. That snapped Tokoyami to alertness, even though his body was slowly coming back to giving any sort of response. Iida was calling for backup...he was sending an alert.

With shaking limbs Tokoyami forced every desperate emotion into his drive to get back on his feet, panic a better motivator than he'd ever expected. Once he was back up he looked Iida dead in the face through the shroud of his mask and hood and watched him stumble away. There was fear ebbing off of him. There was no telling what it must have been like to see Arcane through the blur of poor eyesight and the darkness.

But Tokoyami couldn't think about it. He knew one thing in that moment. He was in danger.

He was suddenly too weak to put up even a small fight. He'd failed to kill Iida in the moment he had him immobilized. And there would be pros and/or police on his location in moments.

Agitated claws raked his skull at the thought, but he had to run. It was the only thing he could do.

Iida's exhausted, pained voice caught him just before he turned to make his get away and Tokoyami bared his teeth in a pleased way at the teenager who was once someone he looked up to.

"Who are you?"

He peered up through his goggles, Iida's dirt and blood covered face unclear by the distance, but clear enough to see the confusion and desperation. He had no idea who he was looking at, half blind himself, but thrown off doubly by the strength, aura, and appearance of the boy who was once Tokoyami. Maybe he wouldn't die today, but there was a satisfaction in knowing that he remained the mystery he wanted to be and that he had given Iida a reason to fear him.

So he gave no response, just put every straining effort into getting up and moving. He slipped easily back into the shadows like he was made from them. Iida calling out after him did not slow him down. If anything he propelled himself faster to escape the sirens he could already hear on approach.

He managed to slip back into the tunnel system before any sights were laid on him and once he was in relative safety he crashed onto the ground again, breath ragged and rumbling on his rough throat as he tried to regain his strength. Tokoyami left the mask on, knowing that the air down here was likely no more fresh than what the mask would filter, but pushed back the hood at least when he leaned his head against the wall.

After a time Dark Shadow made a tentative reappearance, his physical form small and spent.

"What happened?" The creature fumed unyielding frustration, "We had him! Our claws were at his throat!"

Tokoyami's head was aching and he slammed his fist to the ground. "Galileo," he spat, "He must have given us bad enhancers. It felt like all of our power just drained in an instant."

Dark Shadow growled into the darkness. His shadow body flickered in the dim lights of the underground, seeming more withered by the shred of light than usual. "We must kill him for this insult! We are not some child he can meddle with and push around. Make him pay!"

There was a tired, yet amused huff in Tokoyami's throat at thinking of how far their kill list would expand if everyone Dark Shadow had demanded for him to kill were added. But is Galileo had screwed them over, he wasn't above it, though putting him on Tokoyami's official vengeance kill list sounded too good for him. Someone that small and pathetic didn't deserve to be part of his life goal vendetta.

"We don't have the strength to kill anyone right now," Tokoyami grumbled, trying to push back to his feet, "We need to get back to base before we can do anything...and I don't know if I can make that walk without collapsing…"

Dark Shadow was displeased that Tokoyami hadn't rushed with thrill to his idea of killing Galileo, but he couldn't deny that their priority needed to be getting back alive. There was no telling what the after effects of that drug might be. They needed to see the doctor and rest...they could deal with Galileo later.

"Hmph," the doctor grumbled at his most frequent patient, "You took a quirk enhancer before knowing anything about it?"

Tokoyami's patience was low and the IV in his arm was only slowly bringing his strength back. He wasn't able to crack the doctor's head into the wall like he wanted to, not with the unsteady way he was even then sitting on the medical cot.

"Cut to the chase," Tokoyami demanded, "What did it do?"

"Burned up all of your energy reserves in one go is what it did," the doctor glared at his patient, "Your body wasn't prepared. It was a bright burn, but a short lived one. I usually recommend a booster shot before taking something like that and eating a good meal with a good night's rest the night before."

Tokoyami grumbled to himself. He didn't want to admit that he'd barely slept the night before, barely rested in a week really, nor that he'd skipped a couple meals today. Instead he decided to blame it on Galileo's lack of explanation.

"I need one of those booster shots then," Tokoyami said, tapping his fingers impatiently against the bedside, "We almost had him…"

The doctor rolled his eyes. "You got some kind of deathwish, kid? You show up half wrecked and now all you can think about doing is straining your still recovering body to the point of it giving out. I'm not stopping you, just curious if you really are trying to die. There's faster ways to go about it."

Tokoyami huffed and narrowed his eyes behind the goggles. "Don't you have something better to do?"

There was a shrug and a nod. "Than keeping your sorry ass alive? Yes, actually," his hand swept over the table beside him, gathering up a few documents and tucking them under his arm, "I have to see about a small child...boss needs her healthy and all."

Tokoyami frowned, remembering the kid that Hanto had told him not to ask about. He didn't fear the Shie Hissaikai like he did back then and he'd gotten bold. He had no qualms asking the question this time.

"What small child is so important to Chisaki?"

The doctor pursed his lips, shaking his head. "Already said too much. Here," he tossed a capped syringe towards Tokoyami and it fell beside him on the thin mattress, "Try not to kill yourself next time you use a quirk enhancer or at least let me know...there are quicker ways, kid."

Tokoyami snatched the booster and glared after the doctor as he left, less than pleased with his nonchalance towards the idea of suicide or perhaps euthenization on his part. But almost immediately he turned his attention to the item in his hand, soon forgetting the irritating medical professional.

Dark Shadow appeared over his shoulder, peering down at the booster with interest as he hummed deeply.

"Do you feel concern for the child?" the creature asked out of the blue, catching Tokoyami off guard, while a black wisp of hand poked with intrigue at the syringe.

"No!" he demanded, feeling his insides twisting up a bit and cursing that he really couldn't hide his emotions from Dark Shadow, though he tried to deny them, "It's dangerous to be useful to Chisaki...especially for a child. I'm not concerned...it's just a daunting idea."

"You fear Chisaki still?"

Tokoyami huffed. "Let's move on. We need to try this with the enhancers again."

"But we don't have anymore enhancers," Dark Shadow griped, sounding small, since he was so very spent from the crash of the enhancer and only slowly coming back to his strength with Tokoyami.

"We still have the deal with Galileo," he sighed and felt Dark Shadow bristle.

"Bastard!"

"I agree it's annoying and he likely didn't explain it in full on purpose," Tokoyami demanded him to calm down with his tone, "But we still need his resources. I think the enhancer unlocked something in our power that could change everything for us, but we need more. And we need the good ones."

Dark Shadow muttered unhappily and kneaded his now pawlike hands against Tokoyami's arm. He was much more docile and petlike when he was drained of his strength and the lights were on bright. It didn't make his words any less poignant or his timber any less deep and intimidating. And it didn't seem to quell his insatiable desire to kill those who he perceived had wronged him either. He was just sort of...cute while he did it.

"Galileo still requires a favor from us," Dark Shadow reminded Tokoyami, making the teen frown at the thought.

"We'll handle it," he said.

"Why not just ask Chisaki for the enhancers instead? You use his men to gather your information and stalk your prey, why not utilize him to get us the enhancers too?"

Tokoyami shifted uneasily. "I'm not going to him for every small thing. That's a surefire way to break his last remaining shreds of patience with us. He said to use his men and resources. He didn't say he would acquire them for me. I believe he meant he wouldn't get in the way. He wouldn't stop us. He never offered to do any of it for me. We have to earn our own allegiances here, with Galileo and any other. We have Hanto on our side and he has men who listen to him. Galileo has the same and it would be best to have his interests align with ours. We have our informants, but we need Galileo's resources and strength. His people are good in a fight...we want them."

It didn't seem to make Dark Shadow any happier, but his grumbling stopped at least. "Fine. But when this is over I'd like to make the little worm suffer."

That didn't sound like the worst idea in the world so Tokoyami shrugged and didn't crush the creatures hopes of that just yet. "Maybe."

Dark Shadow pulled a smile in Tokoyami's periphery. "Good enough."


	13. Chapter 13: Battle of Conscience

A/N: This is not an abandoned work! Just that I divorced my abusive wife and my new place has a demon in the basement I've been trying to deal with since August of 2019. That's taken up all of my time and energy. Please continue to be patient while I deal with the- [okay that was a joke] But on the real, I'm finally back with an update! As a NaNoWriMo project I was super burned out come December when it came to this story and I took a fat hiatus from it. Then of course Rona happened and the world flipped upside down and I had to do another living situation transition and I'm still working full time and trying to deal with the chaos that life is consistently bringing to my fragile braincells. But despite my lack of available time I made myself bring this back to life! NGL I had like two more chapters written after the last one that was published, but I don't read the manga and the show had not caught up to where things were taking place at the time. Then when it did catch up it made me have to rethink everything I was doing and made me really think about just how much I was trying to change the canon and then the chapter got rewritten three times. Even coming back to it, I basically had to relearn my whole plot and plan and study my own writing a bit just to remember how this was written. If there are inaccuracies to past chapters, forgive me, I have the memory of a goldfish. But we have a plan and direction and HOPEFULLY I will keep the stamina to finish this thing. Forgive me if it takes some time between chapters, but I promise I won't go six months again. LOL! Bless all of you who have found, read, and actually enjoyed this!

This time when they sent Hanto to get information they decided to broaden their band. With Chisaki's insistence not to mess with the League of Villains and the practicality to know that they were not in a place to challenge All For One, they gave him the list of UA students to track down. The five he most blamed for everything. It was still devastating to have lost that kill while it had been within his grasp, but he shook off the past and looked to the future.

Now rested and restored enough to get around and consider trying their experiment again, Tokoyami went back to Galileo, knowing how this was going to go down. As he expected Galileo was smug and badly pretended not to know about those particular side effects. It took a lot not to break his face in right then and there, but Tokoyami kept his cool like he had so long been developing the skill to do. His persona was encapsulated by dark, quiet intimidation and snapping wasn't going to help him continue to demand respect from the Shie Hissaikai.

Galileo's favor came next and Tokoyami took the order with narrowed interest. It didn't seem all that complex a task. Galileo had been slighted and needed a man dead, someone called Foresythe. Tokoyami was no assassin, but he was past his sickness over taking a life and if that's what it took to get his enhancers he'd kill a lowlife without question. And question it, he did not. He asked for no explanation as to what the man had done or why Galileo was resorting instantly to murder and, frankly, he didn't care.

As Galileo set up Tokoyami's mission and detailed when and where to find the man, a lingering aura stuck like sap around his words. It tasted like amusement, but more than that it was knowing. It told that there was something about the target or the mission that he was omitting. Tokoyami would need to be especially cautious, but he didn't fear handling any non-informed surprises that Galileo may have been purposefully hiding in an attempt to sabotage him or possibly get him killed.

Galileo gave him another enhancer as a show of support, but it still dripped in something condescending. Tokoyami took it anyway and left, feeling Galigeo grinning after him with that irritating haughtiness as he went. More and more he was starting to side with Dark Shadow's desire to make him suffer when they had fulfilled their need for him. No one would miss that piece of shit.

Tokoyami found himself back in the city that night, more on the outskirts than amidst the heart of the chaotic bramble. It was an area closer to one of the police stations than he would have liked to be, but he stuck to the shadows and approached the household with caution. He knew for a fact that his victim would be returning at 9pm, accompanied by bodyguards. The wall around his home was high and Galileo had at least been kind enough to inform him that there were heavily armed men inside.

The best option at first seemed to be to stop him before he got through the gate and before he had the support of armed militia. But the police station was close too and if he didn't end Foresythe quickly enough he would be overrun. Perhaps patients and stealth would be their benefactor here and instead of a concise strike to the oncoming vehicle, swift assassination of each bodyguard would work better.

He fingered the syringe as he mulled it over, assessed his options and tried to consider exactly how much effort he was willing to put into this task for someone like Galileo.

"The entire force won't have the power to stop us with the aid of the enhancers," Dark Shadow stated, nudging the hand that held the vial with a shadowy claw, "We will crush Foresythe, his men, and every cop in the city with this."

He liked hearing Dark Shadow's confidence and his morbid desires, but the creature was not viewing this practically. He rarely viewed anything practically.

"We don't know how this one will actually work, Dark Shadow," Tokoyami hummed, "We have the booster shot to take with it, but I don't like the idea of using it for the first time right beside a plethora of police. Maybe we need to use stealth this time."

Dark Shadow shook inside Tokoyami with displeasure. Tokoyami was anxious to try the new enhancer, especially with the aid that the doctor had given them, but now that he saw the environment in which this operation was taking place he was less gungho about rushing into it. The other times their fights had been isolated from the streets and out of the sight of the authorities, quirk-based or otherwise.

"I'll make a deal with you," Tokoyami sighed, trying to get Dark Shadow back on board with him, "We try to take him out quietly first and if that backfires we'll use the enhancer."

"Better," Dark Shadow didn't sound happy, but at least satisfied, "We can make the streets run red…"

"We have no reason to kill cops," Tokoyami bit, "We'll do what we have to, but we aren't massacring innocent people."

There was something amused in the sound that bubbled up from Dark Shadow as his black face leaned in close besides Tokoyami. His essence clung close around his body, a familiar weight, but strangely heavier than usual in the way he seemed to patronize Tokoyami's decision. "We'll do what we have to…"

With a shake of his head Tokoyami descended from his watchful precipice and decided that they would go the route of stealth.

Dark Shadow assisted his indistinguishable movement through the night and deftly scaled the back of the wall, picked up by no passing eye in his blanket of shadow. No sound was heard, not from his feet on the concrete below, nor from man who breathed his last at their hands in the shadows of the manicured foliage within the wall. Dark Shadow merged them into the darkness as Tokoyami eyed their surroundings, his hands, wrapped in the abyssal claws, still crushing the last dregs of life silently from the guard.

There were about six men in total patrolling around the stately home, a couple of them leaning against the building itself, smoking together nonchalantly, but even they were armed and dangerous at a moment's notice. They all hopped to attention when the front gate started automatically opening and their boss's car pulled inside. That's when Tokoyami noticed the movement inside of the house as well, possibly doubling the scope of their opponents.

While the car pulled up to the house, the guards all moved closer to it, a much tighter cluster now than they were before, gathered to greet their employer.

"You have no choice now," Dark Shadow whispered smuggly, quietly laying down the man by their feet, "Stealth is not an option. Take the enhancer before they notice one of them is missing."

His teeth grit, hands clenching. Dark Shadow was right. If they had remained smattered around the courtyard he could have dealt with them one by one, but there was no means for stealth in the way they gathered now.

This would be a warzone in moments.

"We move quickly and we get out fast," Tokoyami insisted.

The creature made a pleased sound and Tokoyami pulled the syringe from his clothes, exposing a piece of skin on his arm. He didn't think about it or even steady his hand, just jabbed down and injected.

A single calm breath escaped him, but that was it.

They moved like a shot, enhancers ripping through them and propelling their every action with speed and accuracy. A roar, intimidating enough to make a grown man cower, echoed around Tokoyami's head as Dark Shadow grew and they converged in an immense force on the cluster of men, already opening fire and shrieking fear at what had leapt from the shadows.

Dark Shadow became the cleaving talons on his hands and the entire environment around them at once. His mass broke the side of the house, surrounded the car and absorbed bullets like sugar in water, protecting Tokoyami from every shot and freeing him to cut the immediate opponents.

Talons ripped through flesh and dying screams shook the night. One bullet got past Dark Shadow's defense, but Tokoyami didn't even feel it. All there was was just intense focus and a high that pulsed the pure feeling of power through him.

The smell of blood burned his nostrils and mixed with oil and gasoline as the front of the car was crushed by Dark Shadow's hand.

Their target spilled out of it, out of where he'd been cowering, and screamed up at the dark, bloodied figure standing over him.

There were corpses all around them and the sound of the men inside the house shouting and still trying to shoot through Dark Shadow was no more than a muffled distraction now.

"Wait!" Foresythe cried, staring hard at the mask on his face, "I'm Hissaikai too! Don't kill me!"

Tokoyami stopped dead in his tracks, arm still poised to slash his face open, but halted by the words. Perhaps that was what Galileo had so conveniently been omitting to tell him.

"What are you waiting for?" Dark Shadow bellowed, his voice a terrible rumble and sirens already blaring in the background, police likely alerted by the gunfire.

"You heard what he said," Tokoyami stayed tense and unmoving, uncertain.

Dark Shadow growled. "Overhaul does not scare me! Let his rules about infighting be damned, if he wishes to kill us over it we will crush him instead! Kill this man."

"Dont!" Foresythe sputtered, hands up and out at Tokoyami in fear.

It was the enhancers clouding his brain, no doubt, which drained sense from his mind. If he'd been clear headed he would have thought it through better, would have considered that Overhaul wasn't just another man who they could defeat so easily. Wasn't someone they should tease the bad side of.

But all of that was far from the present and the talons swept down.

Blood struck Tokoyami's shoes. He gasped and pure adrenaline coursed through his head as the space became deathly quiet.

It was short lived.

More gunfire and shouting met his ears the same moment that Foresythe crumbled to a pile at his feet and that Dark Shadow's barrier of a body shifted around them. Tokoyami lurched around to see what was happening and Dark Shadow roared as he caught a few more bullets in his mass, not allowing them to strike Tokoyami, though he had opened up to their surroundings some.

Tokoyami looked up to the head of the beast, more distorted than usual in the heat of the enhancer's power, but noticed a certain amount of pain despite his size and strength. Whatever was being shot at them was actually able to hurt Dark Shadow, even on enhancers.

Dark Shadow spoke close to Tokoyami's head, "I can't withstand them indefinitely. We must either fight now or leave."

"Leave," Tokoyami demanded, dropping by the corpse, while Dark Shadow covered him and grabbed the ring off of Foresythe's finger - proof of their completed mission.

Dark Shadow growled and Tokoyami could feel the parts of the creature that cloaked him, pulling him and resisting his decision.

"You choose flight when such a fight remains before us? Do you not want to test our power and know how far we can go?"

It was hard to deny the appeal of it, but he still thought the same way that he did before. He was not inclined to want cops dead, even if his adrenaline was making him a bit irrational and prone to chasing his passions.

The ring dropped in his pocket and the gunfire rattled in his head as Dark Shadow physically jerked him around to face the fight behind the cover his body created for them. His physical darkness rippled with painful shots that Tokoyami felt reverberating through their connection, but Dark Shadow remained a shield to Tokoyami despite the pain it put him in.

Tokoyami's movements stuttered when he saw their assailants in full, not entirely what he had expected

As he'd feared, the police had come quickly to the scene; Dark Shadow's body had destroyed much of the courtyard's front gate and walls in his expanded state and an entire force of the police were gathered in the opening, taking cover behind their vehicles and opening fire. That wasn't what was so shocking to see though.

What floored Tokoyami was the faces he recognized behind their police line. Three of his classmates from UA, watching from across the street with a few curious civilians as a cop was directing them all to stay behind the line.

What were they doing here? Why? Why them? They weren't even names on his list… Of all people…

"Abyssal Black Body, move me quickly," he hissed behind the mask and Dark Shadow dropped around him, beneath the hood and body of Tokoyami's cloak. It was like the entire mass of him had disappeared and the shock was clear on the faces of the police staring down the single cloaked figure, staring at them through glinting goggles.

Their gunfire ceased long enough for Tokoyami to lunge forward. Even when they shot again, Dark Shadow absorbed the bullets. Tokoyami felt them though. Felt the impact on his body and the pain that would leave considerable bruises, but Dark Shadow kept him propelled forward working as a singular unit as they skirted the shooting and scaled the wall to the left of the police.

They were taken by surprise and Tokoyami was swift, dropping to the other side and turning at them, but there were more in the direction they were attempting to run.

Dark Shadow was smug and pleased. It was what he wanted after all, not choice but to stand and fight. Tokoyami would simply have to give and get over the results

"Crush them!" Tokoyami shouted in the scratched coarseness of his voice.

Dark Shadow leapt from him in a thrill, his body indistinguishable with the night as he slammed fists the size of boulders against the force of the gathered police, injuring many and crushing their vehicles in a few hits. Some ran for it and others kept firing despite their rampant fear.

There was no challenge here at all. Tokoyami was nearly disappointed with the fight they were faced with.

At least he was until he felt a foot hit his shoulder so hard it sent him slamming back into the wall behind him. He gasped on the shock and blinked up to see the panicked face of his old classmate Sato standing across from him. His fists were raised for a fight, despite how his legs shook. The situation must have looked terribly dire for the stringent students of UA to break their precious rules and join in this fight.

But Tokoyami only cursed at his sudden involvement, not even angry at the ache in his arm as much as the fact that he stood there here and now. None of them were supposed to be here.

Tokoyami was still getting back to his feet when Dark Shadow swept in to intercede, stopping the next hit from cracking Tokoyami's face. Dark Shadow kept what was happening about them a pure chaos, but his focus turned to fighting off the hero student that had attacked Tokoyami.

It was only a moment's reprieve for him, though, as another familiar face appeared jumping into the fight. Tokoyami was prepared enough to catch the impact of Ojiro's tale before it could break his face, but even his block surprised him at the force and strength. They had all been improving in his absence, growing.

Tokoyami's head was spinning as he pushed his classmate back, muddling adrenaline, enhancers and confusion. Part of him wanted to hurt them, it seeped in rage for what they thought of him, for how low the people of UA deemed him, but when he looked at them he still saw his friends. His heart even twisted in a nostalgic need, the part of him that still clung to who these people were and not who they are.

"Arcane do not become distracted!" Dark Shadow bellowed, feeling his hesitation. Every person stumbled from the vibrato of his voice.

He was right. Everything would be over before it began if he didn't focus on what was important. Survival.

The vizor dropped and he gave over to the darkness. His other senses pulsed with movement and motion as he cleared his head of everything except pure fighting instinct. There was no time to sit around and wonder what he should feel, there could be pro heroes arriving to the scene any minute.

Tokoyami shook off the Abyssal cloak, though, rejecting the talons that could so easily maim and kill, the nostalgic part of his heart winning that battle; these were not the ones who had so directly hurt him and he was not fighting them with intent to kill.

Blows hit and the sound of impact and effort intermingled with the swishing of movement and fast paced pants of effort.

But he struck true and the relentless training paid off with a strike that laid out Ojiro and opened up Tokoyami to put an end to the fight.

What felt like three fists at once crashed into the side of his head just before he could strike, though, and the button to control the blinder was hit in the process, snapping the shielding up and revealing the dimly lit world again as he was forced back and shook the daze from his head.

It had actually been three fists that had hit him after all.

Dark Shadow grappled with Sato and the remaining police relentlessly, but Tokoyami turned into a blank slate at the bruised Ojiro and his defender, losing his ability to breathe when he saw his closest friends standing over him.

"Shoji…"

The narrowed eyes of his former friend opened a bit wider on his name, but in a confusion that did not indicate recognition. How could it? Tokoyami's voice was no longer his own and this visage was nothing like how they had known him before.

"Who-?"

Dark Shadow shouted and pulled around Tokoyami again, cloaking him in his black body and lurching him forward as the whir of approaching backup hit their ears and a stray shot narrowly missed them.

"We have to go now!" Tokoyami shouted to him, knowing they needed to get away from this situation quickly or else it was soon to get out of hand.

Turning their backs on their recovering enemy now rising up to come at them again, they ran. They ran and didn't look back, vanishing into the shadows and heading away from the city lights at breakneck speeds. They were not moving in any particular direction, except towards the dark. They could find their way back to the Shie Hissaikai later, but right now they needed to escape the ever growing number of assailants and the deep, withering confusion of facing people he had not expected to see again so soon.

They made it off of the street and out of what could still be called the city to just outside of the streetlights at the end of the block and into the grass of an upward slanted area on the edge of city life. There was a wooded outcrop ahead at the summit of the elevation that had no light within, the perfect place to disappear and let what happened behind them fade.

They had almost made it within when Tokoyami was wrenched back by his arm and slammed to the ground, a red light bursting to life overhead.

The shock was instant and Dark Shadow hissed on the proximity of the flare. Where had he come from? The rush of blood in his ears must have disguised his pursuit from their notice.

Tokoyami lurched away from what jerked had him back and scurried back to his feet, turning on the assailant with Dark Shadow still tight around his body and his talons growing over his fingers.

But he froze when he came face to face with Shoji again, a red flamed torch in one hand as he stood ready for a fight in front of them. He must have swiped the flare from the cops and Tokoyami would have been impressed by the quick thinking if he was not so stunned to be seeing him at all.

Dark Shadow's intent to kill coursed through Tokoyami, but he remained stuck, watching the confusion and what was nearly fear in Shoji's eyes as he stared down his enemy.

The creature attached to him began to move at Shoji, but Tokoyami's words held him from attacking outright

"Cloak the area… I'll do it," he muttered to Dark Shadow, knowing it to be the only way he was going to have any control of the situation.

Dark Shadow's voice rumbled, pleased with his words, and then blackness burst around them, covering a massive circumference, including some of the wooded area and some of the field they'd escaped through.

With the enhancers heightening their overall strength the red light was only an irritation to Dark Shadow; it wouldn't deter either of them.

Shoji crouched a little, posing to defend. "How do you know me…? Why did you say my name?"

There was a tiny spasm inside Tokoyami's hand as an uncomfortable flinch went through his body. He couldn't answer him. He couldn't allow himself.

He tapped the button on the side of the goggles and the vizor dropped again. Tokoyami attacked.

His senses were firing with every movement, the quirk enhancers effecting his ears and his awareness of the very vibrations in the ground around him. He gave over to Dark Shadow's guidance and the map his senses created.

A blow was deflected and an extended hand was slashed on the claw of a talon.

Shoji had the benefit of being able to attack with many fists at once, but Tokoyami had the benefit of having sparred with him countless times before. And, even though Shoji had obviously grown stronger since last time they met, this time Tokoyami was not some child desperately trying to get the demon in his head to obey him. This time he faced him as a boy who had killed and seen the worst of humanity.

Tokoyami knocked away every strike and came on him quickly, the blindness that surrounded him keeping his focus on victory and away from the ache in his chest that would not go away. It gave him the strength and precision to land a strike of his heel into Shoji's side and for his ears to hear the crack of a broken bone.

Shoji had never been very vocal, but Tokoyami could hear his pained hiss and groan as he stumbled back, clutching the injury no doubt.

Tokoyami felt heat come near his face and narrowly missed the flare singing the feathers beneath his hood. His heart skipped a beat at the heat and the light.

Something had to be done about that.

With two quick jabs, he knocked away a strike and hit the hand holding the lit torch. The flare went flying behind Tokoyami and after another few hits that Shoji was unable to dodge, Tokoyami started to smell smoke behind him.

Dark Shadow made a displeased sound and Tokoyami flipped the vizor back up. Fire had caught behind them in the dry leaves at the base of the forest and light started to flick up, orange and glowing and far too close to Dark Shadow's abyssal form.

"Move away from the fire!" Tokoyami shouted to Dark Shadow as he looked back to Shoji, ready to continue the fight, pushing away his concern of the fire to focus on the fight in front of him.

But he faltered when he saw Shoji moving back into a fighting position. He was bruised up and was holding his side with one of his many arms, a pained expression in his eyes and behind his mask that intermingled with pure determination. He wasn't giving up, broken rib or not.

"You killed those men…" Shoji said darkly, the accusation stinging for some reason, "And you recognized me when you saw me… But I don't understand. I don't know any villains, how do you know me?"

Again, Tokoyami didn't answer but lunged back into the fight, forgetting to drop the vizor this time. His opponent was badly injured, he didn't need the advantage of giving himself over to his better senses and Dark Shadow to beat him.

Shoji tried to defend again, but Tokoyami struck another hard blow on his shoulder and cut his arm with his talon. He could feel Dark Shadow's annoyance that he wasn't going straight for the kill, but Tokoyami tried to push that influence away, to stall that action as long as possible.

The hero in training groaned on the new bruise and panted as he looked hard at Tokoyami again.

"You...you're the one who attacked Iida?" Shoji seemed to realize the longer he looked at him and Tokoyami's skin crawled. It crawled because he recalled Iida's description of his assailant better than he recalled the presence of his old friend or the image of Dark Shadow's black body.

But Tokoyami was also prickled with a touch of thrill that word had gotten around of that incident. He tilted his head down then up, confirming without a word and then coming at him again.

Shoji got in a lucky shot and Tokoyami winced on a kick to his thigh. Shoji backed off instantly afterwards, the strike defensive.

"Are you going after UA students then? Is that why you know who I am? Are you working for the League of Villains?"

Tokoyami saw red at the insinuation and his gravel voice shouted rage as he pulled Dark Shadow larger around himself and attacked full force. The creature grew in strength at the pulse of his anger and in a few short moments, they had beaten Shoji so completely that his back was on the ground and he had stopped moving outside of labored pants.

Tokoyami stood aloft and breathed heavily, wanting to scream his hatred for the League and how wrong Shoji was, but held his tongue and let the anger boil and strengthen Dark Shadow instead.

Flames flicked up and expanded slowly into the trees, kicking up ash into the air and making the sealed off world that Dark Shadow had created around them suffocating. His mask filtered most of the smoke out, but it would not be a sustainable environment for much longer.

Things went very still and very empty as Tokoyami stared at what he had done and realized that he felt nothing. He knew that was a good thing, but it also felt so very wrong.

As Shoji started to push himself up onto his elbows, tears stinging his eyes from pain and smoke, he looked to Tokoyami now moving towards him again. Tokoyami was almost stricken with the fear that came into those usually calm, serious eyes as Shoji pushed himself to get away.

"Stop!" he shouted, still determined to get answers despite his defeated state, "Who are you? Why are you doing this?"

Tokoyami stood over him now, staring down through a guise that made him unknowable and speaking in a voice that could no longer be recognized by old friends… And yet, the question struck him with offense. Besides Dark Shadow being somewhat recognizable, even without really seeing the monster's face, there was nothing about Arcane that stood as a clue to his identity being Tokoyami. But to hear Shoji say it outright, twisted like a knife in his belly.

"You of all people...you don't recognize us?" It was a foolish thing to say, but his emotions had gotten away from him. They had gotten away long ago and he wasn't going to bring them under control now.

It went against their entire plans, everything they'd been building, but Tokoyami called Dark Shadow back to him, pulling away the cloak of darkness to reveal the sky above. Dark Shadow warped close around him and hid beneath his garments again, just a flickering, physical shadow over his arms now.

They stepped closer, letting whatever moonlight or licking flames remain to illuminate what it could to the face below them.

"What are-"

Tokoyami crouched to one knee in front of him. Dark Shadow protested this course of action, but Tokoyami ignored him.

He lifted his hands to his face and pulled the goggles from his eyes as the hood dipped back some. Tokoyami's world went blurry with his visual aid gone. He could see nothing of Shoji's face when he revealed himself and his chest went empty with anticipation.

But he heard a gasp that could have just as easily been a sob.

"Toko...Tokoyami?"

Tokoyami flinched on the name and the recognition he'd wanted so badly a moment ago. He panicked and his hand lurched out to grip his friend's neck, rage boiling in his chest again as Dark Shadow purred delight.

He felt Shoji's hands take his arm and squeeze to try and pull his hand away as Dark Shadow helped choke him with a grip that could have easily killed him had Tokoyami not demanded control.

The young, once-hero refused to lower the goggles back over his eyes, though. He couldn't watch what it was he was doing. He felt nothing of the rush he had when trying to kill Iida or fighting people for Chisaki.

Unlike when he'd fought and beaten him a moment ago, this hurt. It hurt to know that he knew who was doing this and to hear his pained gasps and feel him beat his fist on Tokoyami's arm in desperation for him to let go. Tokoyami almost wanted to, but Dark Shadow kept pushing him, kept hissing in his ear to kill him slowly.

He would have done it too, would have given over to the voice in his ear and the adrenaline pulsing in his head had an extended arm not reached out and took his shoulder as another of Shoji's many limbs created a mouth by his face.

"Tokoyami, my friend, please..." he pleaded, hands squeezing Tokoyami's shoulders in a comforting familiarity that ripped at his insides.

"Do not listen to the pleas of your victims!" Dark Shadow crowed, "Think of how they left us for dead…"

The thought caused him to choke harder, but Dark Shadow did not try to force him to slash Shoji's throat this time despite that being their signature move now. He obviously wanted Tokoyami to do it himself.

There was so much hurt in Shoji's voice as his struggle grew a bit weaker while his choking got harsher and he continued to push at Tokoyami weakly. So many arms, but so little strength.

"Please, Tokoyami, even if you were always a villain, even if you are the traitor, there was also a time we were friends," the mouth by his head said, "I never wanted to assume the worst and I won't. I still have faith in you!"

Tokoyami faltered and it gave Shoji leeway to breathe. He should have jumped back in and finished what he'd started, but he couldn't make himself.

His hands loosened steadily and he moved back from him completely, blinking wide eyes at the nothingness he saw.

Dark Shadow rumbled with complaint at the mental demand as Tokoyami used all of his willpower to suppress the creature's reaction and hold him down inside of him. It was his force of will above all else, the swell of confusion that ripped him away from going through with taking the kill alone that held down the shadow beast. He practically thrashed within, rage boiling up to Tokoyami's head. It took a lot of focus to hold him down, to stop him from retching free and taking matters into his own hands and it was all he could do just to stand there and slide the goggles back over his eyes, flipping the hood back to cover himself again. He didn't want to see what he'd almost done, but he needed the practicality of not being blind in this situation.

Shoji was gasping for breath in front of him, rubbing his neck and staring wide eyed at Tokoyami. He didn't move, just went unblinking at the man who had been his friend disappearing behind the guise of Arcane.

"Leave now if you value your life," Tokoyami cut the air with his voice.

Shoji's brow tightened at it, at how truly different it likely sounded...at how different all of him was.

"What happened to you…?"

Dark Shadow screamed murder in Tokoyami's head and his fists clenched at his sides.

"Shoji!" he snapped, "Go now. I can't hold him forever. You don't deserve what they do… It was never your fault."

"_They are all complicit!"_ Dark Shadow grated against his skull with his demand, but Tokoyami stood firm, every limb shaking with the effort to hold him.

Shoji tried to search Tokoyami's face, but it was an impossible task.

"Who deserves what, Tokoyami?"

Shoji pushed in pained groans to his feet and did the opposite of what he was supposed to and stepped towards him. "You tried to kill Iida…" he recalled again, this time with an added dose of surprise after realizing who the man behind the mask was, "What have they done?"

The oblivious question sparked rage again and it gave Dark Shadow the power to burst a slashing arm from Tokoyami. Shoji narrowly ducked it and immediately scrambled back before Tokoyami could pull it under his control again.

It was too much like the forest when all of this had begun. Tokoyami having lost to his rage, Dark Shadow getting out of his control and Shoji the only victim around for Dark Shadow to unleash it all on. They'd hurt him then too and he had refused to go and leave him to war with the creature alone. He was a fool. But that memory particularly was what made it so hard to willfully hurt him again.

"I told you to leave!" Tokoyami screamed, the sound so desperate on his damaged vocal chords.

"_Arcane, we agreed you would not try to control me anymore!"_ Dark Shadow roared as he was drawn back and thrashed against Tokoyami's hold.

"Shoji!" Tokoyami yelled, grabbing his attention with the tone of a threat, "This isn't like last time. You can't save me from myself. You cannot fix this with a fire quirk."

Shoji stumbled a step back. A start at least. There was a wad of desperation and frustration in his heart. Why wouldn't he just go?

"We will kill you and I won't be able to stop him. We're stronger than last you saw us…"

His eyes were agonized and it obviously killed him to do it, but he turned on them. He ran towards the flames that kept spreading. The forest was dangerous, as it was starting to slowly catch fire, but it was a smart place to retreat nonetheless. The light was brightening. Dark Shadow would hesitate to follow.

Shoji grabbed the still lit flare and stopped just at the edge, looking back to Tokoyami's distressed form, body language unable to hide the things going on behind his mask, the effort and strain it required just to keep the creature from ripping him apart.

"We will save you," Shoji said resolutely despite his labored breath, "Some of us haven't given up on you. This isn't over, Tokoyami."

He vanished into the danger of the woods, but Tokoyami held on as long as he could even though his gut twisted. They hadn't all given up on him? What did that even mean?

The emotions had turned from rage to a sense of crushed defeat and Tokoyami dropped to his knees in pure exhaustion, letting his grip on Dark Shadow slip.

He filled the night around Tokoyami with a roar and went in the direction that Shoji had run. But they were both drained of most of the enhancer's power and he was not as strongly resistant to the light and heat as he had been before. He hissed when it struck his face and he clawed the ground in anger.

The air punched from Tokoyami's lungs as Dark Shadow crashed physically against him and collided him with the ground. He looked through the flickering light of the flames to the glowing yellow eyes over him.

Talons dug through the fabric of his clothes against his chest and Tokoyami went very still to the fitful state of Dark Shadow above him. His heart sped up...Dark Shadow had never reacted like this before. He'd never bared his teeth at his host.

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami yelled at him in shock.

"I should have known you would choke up!" he spat, "You do not have the strength to face your enemies!"

"He is not our enemy!" Tokoyami demanded.

"They are all our enemies!" Dark Shadow slammed down a fist into Tokoyami's chest. It winded him again, but only hurt a little, "Everyone is our enemy. Every person who dwells behind the walls of UA are our Shie Hissaikai are our enemies. Overhaul is our enemy."

Dark Shadow's yellow eyes were so intense, so very nearly hurt that Tokoyami choked at seeing them even in the unclear disruption of darkness and licking orange fire.

"I am the only one that is not your enemy," Dark Shadow continued, "I am the only person you can trust. We are bonded by our symbiosis and by the hell that we have experienced at the hands of everyone around us. I refuse to be jerked around by your sympathy. You must have faith in me. We are on a quest of vengeance. All must suffer, all that are complicit are guilty."

With every word Tokoyami slipped farther into fear… Fear of the creature above him and just how far his destructive intentions went.

And then there was guilt. He had resolved not to try to control Dark Shadow and yet he'd broken that by forcing him down inside of him again, suppressing him. No wonder the creature acted so hurt, betrayed.

"We are all that we have..." Tokoyami breathed it out in a whisper, torn and confused as he repeated their repetitive shared thought like something that had no will behind it.

His hand lifted to the shadow-formed head above. He didn't regret letting Shoji live, but he did ache at the pained sense that Dark Shadow reverberated against the bond they had. The deep seated offense he'd taken.

But Dark Shadow was angry and hit it away. Black hands took that arm and slammed it back down, talons scraping through the fabric and searing pain up Tokoyami's arm.

"You have nothing but me and you are nothing without me!" Dark Shadow floored him.

He'd never been afraid for himself from Dark Shadow until then. He had feared what the creature was capable of thousands of times over, but always what he could do to others. Never what he would do to Tokoyami. But he felt it now. Fear for himself from his constant companion.

All he could do was lie there very still and choke out the words, "I'm sorry, Dark Shadow."

The creature hissed above him and then in a snap he jerked away from him. Dark Shadow swirled in the night and then pulled back inside of Tokoyami, settling into the back of his mind, a presence that would never abate or diminish.

But he remained unmoving despite the threatening presence disappearing from in front of his face, too shocked. And it wasn't as though Dark Shadow had left, he was still there. He was always there.

Tokoyami swallowed hard on a new fear he had never expected to fear. Fear of the beast within that, no matter their fallout, he could not escape.


	14. Chapter 14: Lost In The Blink Of An Eye

**A/N: **Sorry if this chapter doesn't live up to past ones or doesn't make much sense of kind of glosses over a lot, but I just needed to get it out and keep moving forward. A conclusion is only a few chapters away and I'm hoping for the end to live up to what's preceded it! Of course I also apologize for this taking so long. I took a break from writing this and other things to focus on the TdMm Mini-Bang project and it was an absolutely rewarding experience! But now that I'm back with time for this, life has decided I should be doing other things as well so I'm splitting the short amount of brainpower I have among different responsibilities. I'll update as often as I can, but I can't guarantee swiftness. Just know that I don't plan to quit this story, I just have to take time between updates. Thank you for understanding!

The city limits had barely reabsorbed them when the first leather-beaked figure stepped into their path. Weary and on the low of the enhancer's aftereffects as they were, the sight came with frustration and the bristle of Tokoyami's spine.

He didn't have to look around to know that the Hissaikai were inhabiting the shadows around them, to know that they were surrounded, outnumbered and being threatened. There could be no good reason for a welcoming committee like this and Tokoyami poised himself warily as he addressed the shadow covered body that stood directly in their path.

"Which one of Overhaul's disposables are you?" He said with more confidence than he felt as Dark Shadow unfurled to life over him becoming a weakened, but daunting aura, ready to protect or kill if given reason.

A laugh escaped the mask of the man ahead of them and he stepped into the low ray of streetlight that had made its way into the alley. The bodies in the darkness started to peel away from it and the two found themselves in the midst of a posse of four men, none of which looked like they could be described as "disposable", including the leader.

Or at least Tokoyami thought that until he pulled the mask away in the low light and showed his ugly mug.

"You son of-"

Galileo cut him off with a sneer, a belittling glare in his eye. "You didn't think I was really going to help you, did you kid? I went straight to Overhaul with what you were trying to do and he sent me after you."

"You're the one who sent me to kill Foresythe," Tokoyami's scratchy voice shook with his anger, "If Overhaul has a problem with him being dead, he should be looking at you."

"If Overhaul had any brains he would have destroyed a slimy rat like this the day he met him," Dark Shadow added viciously.

Dark Shadow buzzed in an echo of Tokoyami's rage and he was never more grateful for how thoroughly his face and expression were disguised in his Hissaikai attire. He mentally took back every defense he'd given Galileo against Dark Shadow's intent to murder him before. The creature had been right all along. They should have killed him outright and taken his stock of enhancers for themselves after his first 'betrayal'.

Galileo huffed. "I almost forgot the beast could speak for itself."

The men with Galileo felt duantingly close, but Tokoyami stayed focussed on the leader, letting Dark Shadow watch out behind them.

"Half of us in the Shie Hissaikai want each other dead," Galileo crossed his arms, "It doesn't matter who wants to kill who, it matters who goes through with it."

Galileo leaned forward in front of him to meet the teen's eyeline, reiterating that he was an adult speaking to a youth.

"You're the one that took the kill, you're the one who pays for it."

Tokoyami's hands flexed for a fight, heavily feeling every ounce of weariness and emotional strain from their earlier fight with Shoji aching in his muscles. Dark Shadow was weak too, tired, frustrated by even the very low beam of streetlight. It wouldn't stop them from killing every last one of these men if they had to, but it would make it incredibly difficult.

"You never intended to give me the enhancers." Dark Shadow folded over Tokoyami and his darkness dropped over his hands, forming smaller, duller talons than usual, the best they could currently do.

"And waste good product on you?" Galileo sucked his teeth, "I was just waiting for an opportunity to get rid of you and you came to me asking for it! You have no place in the Hissaikai. It was a mistake for Overhaul to allow you to walk among us and I'll make that entitled shit see it. But now that you've killed Foresythe…" he paused to grin smugly, a quick glance past Tokoyami saying that he was watching the men encroaching at their backs. "He won't be so forgiving with you. You'll be lucky if you keep your limbs for that. Overhaul may not like any of us, but he knows our value and you just killed a very valuable player."

"This man talks too much," Dark Shadow hissed, "Lets rip out his tongue."

Of all the horrible suggestions Dark Shadow regularly had that sent shivers down Tokoyami's spine with discomfort, this one practically made the boy smile. He'd love to see Galileo without a tongue… Maybe without a throat. He could slowly suffocate, unable to scream and cry for help. That felt befitting.

Dark Shadow focussed his power into sharpening his talons as red entered Tokoyami's vision, intent to kill replaced by intent to horribly maim.

"Good idea," Tokoyami agreed.

He lunged at Galileo and there was a momentary shock in the man's eyes as the Hissaikai leapt away in sudden panic and then there was another wry grin as a sharp pin-prick feeling hit the back of Tokoyami's leg.

The duo of man and monster stumbled as his entire leg gave out from under him and his knee collided with the concrete. Dark Shadow's weak form faltered and reduced again as the world around Tokoyami started to swirl out of focus and Dark Shadow was suddenly quiet.

"What-?"

"You didn't think I was going to actually fight you, Arcane?" Galileo shrugged as a few Hissaikai flanked Tokoyami, "I'm not an idiot. I've seen what that creature does."

Everything was unsteady and suddenly Dark Shadow was no longer around him, but inside of him again. The creature was silent, weary, but Tokoyami was barely able to speak either and he knew his consciousness was slipping. His hands scraped the pavement and he bemoaned that he had not worn his gloves when the sting cut him.

"Why?" Tokoyami barely managed to get out as his muscles continued to shake and give out under him.

"I know who you are...hero," Galileo scoffed and shock threw Tokoyami's eyes wide up at him, "You and Overhaul thought you could hide your identity from us, but we have our resources too. It's bad enough we have those goons from the League in our ranks without adding in failed UA kids. That fool will bring down the entire name of the Hissaikai if we let him continue like this."

Strong hands manhandled Tokoyami back to his feet and supported his entire weight, now entirely unable to hold himself while panic rose higher and higher with every word out of Galileo's mouth. A mess of new fears joined the old, fear from Galileo knowing that Arcane used to be Tokoyami and the greater uncertainty of who that information may have been spread to. It almost drowned out the immediate terror of his limp body being in the hands of people who wanted to harm him and that Galileo was making him take the blame for Foresythe's death.

He tried to speak, to spit in his face, anything, but his head lolled forward and the living dark of overtaking subconscious started to swirl in his brain.

Galileo fisted the feathers on his head, pushing the hood back and staring into his goggles with a victorious glint in his eye.

"I'll show Overhaul and every one of his special projects like you that I'm not to be trifled with. The Hissaikai will be strong again and it won't be because of you quirk users."

The last thing Tokoyami saw before the all consuming darkness overtook was Galileo snapping his beaked leather mask back over his face and the last thing he felt was the scraping drag of his feet on the harsh pavement.

Blearily he blinked in the low daylight and felt the lack of content on his stomach choke him, trying to come up in an aching dry heave. There was harsh pressure on his gut and he was being jostled from his seat in the car he did not remember entering.

He could barely move except to groan and fumble in the grip of his captors as they tried to keep him upright. His limbs were weak and his arms were restrained at his back, bound at the wrist. The ropes didn't feel too tight, but he could barely twist his hands to even try to wriggle free so it didn't matter.

His choked fit ended as he came to his senses in the morning light on a corner he recognized to be a few blocks away from the Hissaikai base. There was little to no movement in the city around them and they were headed for another back alley street that would lead inconspicuously to the Shai Hissaikai's backdoor while the driver brought the car around to the front entrance.

Tokoyami's mind raced in fear of how close danger was and he muttered Dark Shadow's name in his delirium, hoping that the shadowy beast would respond with necessary force, but the creatures strength drew from his own and all he felt from that first attempt was a slight stirring, as though Dark Shadow was only just waking. He would have to get his strength back and fast if he was going to get any help from Dark Shadow or be of any use to himself.

The men who were practically dragging him along muttered amongst themselves that he was starting to move and speak again and it came with both annoyance and caution. Galileo ordered them to remain quiet on approach to the Hissaikai house, but their muttering only continued quieter.

"-just want him out of our hands as fast as we can," the man mumbled, "I don't want to be around when that monster comes back."

"He's just a kid," the other that dragged him scoffed.

"Just a kid?" the first shivered, "You saw what he did to Foresythe's place. A _kid_ doesn't cause a massacre like that. That was inhuman. It's what makes me think following Overhaul is going to be the death of us all. He gathers fiends like this and he gives them the means to do things like that… He's a damn monster, it doesn't matter how young he is."

The second just scoffed again and they fell silent.

Tokoyami cringed. A monster? The man dragging a sixteen year old to be executed by a mob boss was the monster, not him. He was a survivor, this man was a useless lackey with a righteous fear of what Arcane was capable of.

The stirring inside of him grew with his awareness and every second seemed to pulse a renewed energy inside of him. A residual effect of the enhancers or adrenaline he couldn't say, but the strength in his bones returned steadily to his panicked fear of what was around the next bend.

"_Do not speak,"_ Dark Shadow ordered from within, "_Do not let them know that I have awoken."_

Something grabbed Tokoyami's throat and he gave the faintest nod, letting himself remain lax in the hands that pulled him, chest pounding in anxious anticipation of Dark Shadow's voice.

"_Just before the end of the alley there is a dark patch of shadow,"_ he continued, "_The light beyond it will be blinding, but it will give me the power I need to free us. Do you have the strength to run or fight?"_

That was not so easy a question to answer. He could hold his head up now if he wanted and could definitely stand on his own if allowed, but as for throwing a punch or speeding away to where he would not be instantly caught again, he could not guarantee. But what other choice did he have but to try?

His head lolled in a nod only Dark Shadow could pick up on and the creature vibrated approval.

"_Be ready,"_ Dark Shadow instructed, "_I will free you, then you must decide right away what you will do."_

Tokoyami prepared himself and kept a half closed eye on the spot. Behind his goggles they likely couldn't see where or even if he was looking anywhere, but he didn't want anyone to notice how aware he was so he kept every action subtle. The decision was internally made and he only hoped Dark Shadow would go along with it. If he resisted at all, Tokoyami was certain they wouldn't make it.

But the opportunity for this particular escape never came. Not in the way they thought, not in the way they could ever have predicted.

Until then the sounds of the city slowly coming to life had been dull, but there had been an almost unnoticeable, distant commotion that didn't feel so distant anymore. It sort of came crashing down on them instead and the more literal crash that happened just beyond the very near exit threw every man for a loop.

Their captors faltered in shock and Dark Shadow took the opportunity for what it was. He burst from Tokoyami and ripped the bindings free from his wrists, attacking both men at Tokoyami's sides in the same motion. They fell back and the other two were only just getting their bearings when Tokoyami tried to run for it.

However much he wanted to stay and shred Galileo's face, he knew he was in no state to fight and the adrenaline would only be enough to get some space between them on its own. He ran towards the light, towards a chance for freedom before Galileo or the remaining goon could stop him. But even that came crumbling down when something as large as a house met something of equal size in a grapple before the house that stood as the front of the Shie Hissaikai base.

The one in the Hissaikai attire was vicious, but hit the ground on the attack of what looked to be a dragon. No, not a dragon, a hero; a well known hero, Ryuku. That was all he gathered about them before he, Galileo and all the men with him were knocked off of their feet by the rumble of the earth and cracking of concrete.

"What is that?" one the Hissaikai screamed.

"_An opportunity," _Dark Shadow said, "_I feel your renewed strength. Focus. Galileo will pay today. Move swiftly while they are still distracted."_

Tokoyami didn't quite feel the strength that Dark Shadow mentioned, but he obeyed the demand without thought. He was still so angry and spiteful that any fight of oversized heroes could not keep his interest over Dark Shadow's order to kill Galileo.

Dark Shadow formed their Abyssal Black body while the absolute chaos in front of them, the battle of titans, the shouting of police and shots being fired, faded into nothing.

Every movement was driven by adrenaline and hatred when Tokoyami ran at Galileo, still scrambling to get back to his feet and understand what was happening. One of the men with him caught onto what was happening before he did, though, and moved between them, gun in hand and body prepared to take a hit. But he was not prepared for the speed and brutality that the duo put into their attack. The gun wasn't up before it was cut from his grip or the roaring rage of Dark Shadow and Tokoyami had slammed clean into him, knocking him back into Galileo and off both of their feet.

"Damn kid-"

Another rumble came with the continued battle of giants and the other men faltered. Dark Shadow kept Tokoyami's balance and the talons that grew from his hands became like blades. He gave the cowardly Hissaikai reason to fear him before he killed him. The other man who had underestimated him found his face cleaved before his head was snapped back in a grotesque twist all for the eyes of the second man who met an equally brutal attack a moment later.

No sooner had the scent of death hit the air than a bullet nearly missed Tokoyami's head. Adrenaline turned to panic as they spun on their attacker and dashed to the side to avoid a subsequent shot. Galileo was back on his feet and the man who had tried to defend him was scrambling to his feet, holding his injured hand and looking for an exit.

"I should have killed you that first night that Overhaul assigned you to my team," Galileo spat and fired again.

Tokoyami owed his life to Dark Shadow's keen senses and the way he physically pushed him to move before the bullet could leave the chamber. He didn't have the physical fortitude that he had on the enhancers the night before, he couldn't just block and take the bullets unharmed so dodging was their only course and even that couldn't be kept up.

"We can't keep avoiding shots, rush him!" Dark shadow shouted.

Tokoyami's feet were moving before he recalled telling them to. Dark Shadow guided his movements in the hold he had over his body and sent them ducking away from another shot and kicking off of the alley's wall, to propel themselves at Galileo and collide foot to gun.

It clattered to the concrete and Tokoyami's forearm hit Galileo's chin, knocking his head back and dazing him. They threw him to the ground and dropped over him, taloned hands at his throat and knee deep into his arm while the last standing man made a run for it.

Tokoyami hesitated when he saw him go, but Dark Shadow demanded his attention, his yellow eyes hard on Galileo. "He is insignificant! Kill this one and worry about the other later."

"No, wait!" Galileo gasped and struggled under the hold enforced by the shadowed creature, "I can still get you more enhancers!"

"The Hissaikai base is swarmed by police, your stash is lost," Tokoyami spat at the feeble attempt to save his skin, "I wouldn't leave an ogre like you alive anyway."

Dark Shadow chuckled approval and Tokoyami lifted his arm, shaking through his muscles with weakness and rage.

"There's a hidden stash!" Galileo practically screamed, ripping one arm free and putting it to Tokoyami's chest to stop his follow-through.

Tokoyami paused and it aggravated him and Dark Shadow equally, but they both wanted to know if it was true. Dark Shadows eyes slanted on Galileo and they remained paused in that threatening position.

"Where?" Dark Shadow hissed as they fisted Galileo's shirt and jerked him up to a seat.

The man looked past them to the shreds of chaos they could see beyond the alley walls.

"I have a small stash hidden away from the rest of the supply," Galileo licked his lip nervously, "A compartment under the floor in my room. I'll even show it to you if you let me go."

"Or we could just kill you and destroy the room until we find it," Dark Shadow suggested.

Tokoyami shook his head at the whole idea, though. "That place is crawling with heroes and police. You're trying to get us caught and killed."

"Wait until everything settles and then go," Galileo was mentally scrambling, "If anyone has the stealth to slip in and out unseen it's you. And the compartment is locked, you'll need my passcode to get into it so you can't do it if you kill me."

The temptation to kill him and take the risk was almost too much, but he was caught on Dark Shadow's similar hesitance. He tilted his head up to meet goggles to yellow eyes.

"Are the enhancers important enough to take the risk?" Tokoyami verbalized the question that was strong between them.

"Without it we will not have the strength to take our vengeance on the strongest of our enemies," Dark Shadow responded with frustration, "We've lost our allies and resources in this raid as well and we will not even have Hanto to assist us this time. If we do not take the enhancers we will be forced to put our plans on hold again."

Tokoyami could physically feel how much the idea of putting off their vengeance infuriated Dark Shadow. A twinge of fear turned in Tokoyami's chest and, after what had happened earlier, he allowed it to fester without question, terrified to incur Dark Shadow's wrath towards himself again. So he just nodded and caved to what the creature wanted.

"Fine," Tokoyami growled, stepping back to jerk Galileo to his feet, talons still poised to strike, "Show us to the enhancers and you can live...for now."

Galileo gave a nervous smirk, legs trembling as he stood, hunched with how the shorter boy shorter still fisted his shirt. "I'll give you the code and then you'll let me go."

"Not likely," Tokoyami snapped.

The man's head was obviously racing with how to keep the very same body part attached to his neck.

"I have more reason to help you than betray you," Galileo swallowed, "If you get the enhancers you'll go after the people you really want dead and I'll have more time to get far away from you, but if I somehow betray you I can be certain you'll come for me first. It wouldn't be in my best interest to get in your way now."

There was skepticism, but his words had a certain sense to them. There was a deep, gripping hatred in them both for Galileo, but it didn't compare to the betrayals of their once friends and the horrors they suffered at the hands of the League of Villains or All for One. Galileo would be a vengeful afterthought if they had the ability to end those who had truly made them suffer. He would still get what was coming to him eventually, but maybe some time spent in anticipation and fear would make killing him all the sweeter.

"Alright," Tokoyami ground his teeth, "You've saved your sorry skin for today. But if ever we see you again there won't be a damn thing you could say that will keep your head on your shoulders."

Galileo was stuck somewhere between terrified and smug. It took a lot of self control not to beat the look off of his face.

"Don't go through the front door or the back," Galileo quickly advised, glancing towards the fight, "Take the entrance two blocks down and wait until the fighting has come to a standstill."

A brief nod said that it was agreeable and Tokoyami unclenched his fist. Galileo scrambled back quickly getting out of their reach with heaving breaths.

"Passcode," Dark Shadow barked, "Or we will finish this now."

Galileo looked behind him in the direction he was prepped to run, "It's 0029-82."

The words had barely gotten out before Galileo turned tail and ran like his life depended on it. And well it did. There was intent in Dark Shadow's movement to go for the kill right after he'd finished speaking, but their own physical weakness kept their pace and reach too slow and short to get him before he was out of sight.

"It's fine," Tokoyami shook off the escape, "We'll take care of him later. He's only prolonging what's left of his short life."

"He will be lucky if it's only short," Dark Shadow agreed maliciously.

Moving away from the fight and the gathering attention it was receiving, Tokoyami and Dark Shadow kept to the waning shadows as they did best and slowly made their way up the next couple blocks to the hidden entrance that Galileo had mentioned. They had used it a few times before and would be able to find their way to where they needed to go with minimal confusion, but the real issue would be patience.

They couldn't rush in while there was a full raid in progress, they would be taken or killed in the scuffle. And, on top of it, the longer they sat without something stimulating their adrenaline, the more the exhaustion of the previous enhancer use and the tranquilizing shot from before would begin to weigh. Tokoyami's body was weak and low on energy. It needed rest, fluids and food, none of which they could obtain right now. All he could do was sit and wait as they grew weaker.

Sounds of a fight continued in the distance even from here and they became a backdrop in his mind as he sat in the darkness of the shadows. His arms were propped on his knees and his forehead rested against them until he began to shiver and sweat in a feverish way. In that moment he held himself close and felt his teeth chatter together.

"I feel it too," Dark Shadow groaned, voice softer than usual, "Our body is void and drained. But our survival is not yet guaranteed, we cannot relax or give up."

If Tokoyami's body was void then his head was even moreso. It was worse than before. That crushing emptiness of fear, exhaustion, and emotional devastation over everything that had happened since the previous day. But he stayed focussed, thought only of the task ahead, pushed away thoughts of Galileo, of Overhaul, of Shoji.

It felt like hours, but finally Dark Shadow shook him back to full consciousness and demanded that it was time. Everything was incredibly quiet; smoke and destruction could be glimpsed in the direction of the Hissaikai base. Now was the time.

They slipped into the entrance and began a familiar journey through the underground system they had grown accustomed to. Tokoyami walked slowly and unsteadily and Dark Shadow retreated inside of him for the bulk of the time, conserving their strength as best they both could.

"We need to take some of those booster shots from the doctor's station too," Tokoyami muttered as they came to the body of the base.

Dark Shadow agreed and peaked out from Tokoyami to cling close under his dark cloak, a clear set of eyes hidden in aid towards their stealth.

Within the base he found a disaster. He moved slowly and the adrenaline he had lost before returned as anxiety as he passed policemen dragging away Hissaikai and stepped over a few bodies of cops and gang members. Anywhere they were they quietly shut off the lights to aid their movements being unseen. Of course it disrupted Tokoyami's sight as well, but he chose again to rely on Dark Shadow's guidance and his instincts.

It wasn't all that difficult to get to Galileo's room unseen by authorities or heroes. There seemed to be much bigger issues on their minds and most of the chaos sounded like it had returned to the surface.

Quietly they skimmed over each floorboard in search of the panel and found the hidden compartment beneath the bed. They lifted it and found a steel, locked case inside. Still blinded by the dark, Dark Shadow input the code given by Galileo and they braced themselves for betrayal. But the latch came free and the little door opened easily.

"He told us the truth," Tokoyami gasped.

He reached in and grabbed an entire handful of vials.

"It's the enhancers," Dark Shadow confirmed with his night vision, "They appear to be a higher dose too." There was a grin in his voice. "Maybe we will give Galileo a less painful death for this."

Tokoyami shivered, but mostly grit his teeth as he pocketed as many as he could grab.

"We still need to get out of here," Tokoyami reminded him and moved back to the door to crack it and peer out into the semi-lit hallway.

"Looks like it's all clea-wait," Dark Shadow forcibly pulled Tokoyami back from the crack and pushed him to the wall.

Air sucked in, but Tokoyami was instantly quiet as footsteps filled the silence along with voices; official types, the kinds that barked orders.

"-and I don't want to see one of you until every inch of this place is searched and accounted for. You, come with me."

A softer voice joined it.

"Where are we bringing this stuff?"

"To the station," the authoritative voice demanded, "They want it tested and all samples locked out of reach of villains or heroes. The heroes are saying it has some nasty effects. That some of them can take away quirks...permanently."

"Good God," the second gasped, "Isn't it bad enough what they did to that kid?"

That was the last that Tokoyami heard as the voices continued moving, but it was more than enough and he and Dark Shadow looked to each other with a similar thought on their minds.

"Something that can take away a quirk?" Tokoyami gasped, "Something that could make our enemies killable…"

"We must have it," Dark Shadow concluded the thought.

"But there's so many of them out there," Tokoyami frowned, "How will we-?"

"We have the darkness on our side," Dark Shadow hissed, "In the blackness I will move us too fast for them. I will destroy the light, then move and follow my lead."

He didn't allow time for Tokoyami to consider it, he just pushed him to move right away. The door flung open and Dark Shadow crashed his body into the overhead light, shattering it. There were other people in the hallway and some in the rooms that trailed down in either direction as well as two men in the direction of their exit holding each a steel case. Tokoyami could only note momentary surprise before the darkness blinded him to all else but a few distant gleams behind them and the sounds of a scramble amongst the blurred shadows.

The vizor dropped, all reliance on sight snatched away as Tokoyami ran towards the two men with the cases and Dark Shadow folded over him to guide his movements. No one opened fire, too much risk of hitting their own stopping them, but the sounds of confusion were loud and prevalent.

Tokoyami was tired, there was no getting around that, but this was the last act he would have to do before making his escape and he focussed on that. If he could take the case and make it back out of the base he could rest. The short term goals were the only thing keeping him going anymore.

Tokoyami swung a high kick, taking the first man in the side of the head and then jabbing both fists in a powerful hit to the second man's core. He heard them hit the floor and heard the cases clatter with them.

There were people coming at them from behind and there was no time to waste or think. They took both cases, not knowing what was in either, but not having the time to consider it.

Tokoyami groaned on the strain to his tired muscles. They were heavy, but he could manage with Dark Shadow pushing him.

"Stop him!" the leader shouted frantically as Tokoyami shot past them and ran for his life back the way they had entered the base.

There was no avoiding getting attention now and no time to get the boosters from the doctor's station. The exit was all they could think of. Still no guns fired, but footsteps followed them with shouts. The vizor stayed down and Tokoyami put all of his trust in Dark Shadow's guidance.

They shouldn't have survived this, they shouldn't have managed to escape this, but perhaps they had caught the police so by surprise after their hard won battle that they were just being sloppy; though Tokoyami was being plenty sloppy himself. Or perhaps Dark Shadow was just that determined to get away with their new weapon that exhaustion and fear couldn't stop them.

Somehow they made it to the exit and that's when the first bullet missed them. Tokoyami nearly panicked at so close an impact as he scrambled to get the door open. Another came and he almost fell collapsed had it not been for Dark Shadow pushing them through.

One case had been put down to get the door open, though, and there was no chance to grab it again before they slipped through and slammed it closed behind them. Dark Shadow cursed at the loss, but in his anger threw a punch upward to some already brittle stone. It cracked and another shot hit the other side of the door.

"Break it!" Tokoyami shouted at the feeling reverberating through their bond, noticing the weakness in the overhead structure.

Dark Shadow detached from the cloak he had made over Tokoyami's body and slammed his entire self into the already fractured ceiling. They had to dive back to avoid getting hit by the falling stones crashing with force in front of the door. Bruises were their initial reward, but when Tokoyami flipped the vizor back up he found that there was a rocky barricaded mess between them and the police.

It felt like he breathed for the first time in an hour when Tokoyami pushed himself up to his hands and knees and stared at the new wall.

"We lost one of the cases," Tokoyami grit his teeth.

Dark Shadow sounded tired, but still determined. "It won't matter if this one has what we need."

They got to their feet and took the case's handle, deciding to get farther away from their far too close escape before checking the contents. It was only a matter of time before the police busted back through. It was better to leave them in the confusion of this underground maze alone.

On weary feet that scraped the ground with each step and carrying a metal case that grew heavier every moment they came back to the surface. Sealing the entrance behind them, they dropped the case on the concrete of the secluded alleyway. It was protected by a locked latch, but Dark Shadow had no patience left to try and handle it delicately.

Dark talons appeared with what was left of his strength and beat the lock until it broke free. Tokoyami scrambled to throw it open and found an assortment within of different needle-tipped vials, not unlike the enhancers he'd take from Galileo, and a gun made to fire the bullets that they became. They were labeled as "Quirk-Killers" with numbers following them that got exceptionally high.

"What does that mean?" Dark Shadow grumbled at them.

"That they're experimental," Tokoyami chewed his cheek, "These are attempts at a perfected quirk killing bullet."

"Will any of them actually work?"

That was the 1,000 yen question.

"There's no way of knowing unless we try them," Tokoyami frowned, "But… It's safe to assume that the earlier ones don't work as well as the later ones. If they had gotten it right early on there would be no need to continue experimenting."

"Take the last sequence then," Dark Shadow nodded, "With that and the enhancers we should be unstoppable."

Tokoyami pocketed those items and took the weapon before trying to stand. The last action failed and he stumbled, shoulder impacting the wall.

"We won't be anything if we collapse and die in this alley," Tokoyami grumbled, "We need to find somewhere to hide and regain our strength."

"But it's daylight," Dark Shadow sounded disgusted, "How will we hide?"

"Keep to the backstreets and shadows," Tokoyami took a heavy step forward and groaned at the effort, "We've survived this long. We can keep surviving."

There was a smile on Dark Shadow's face as he wrapped around Tokoyami again to support his movements. "Now you sound like yourself."

Tokoyami didn't quite feel like himself, despite Dark Shadow's words. He felt like an empty shell, following survival instinct and chasing some alleviation to his pure exhaustion and pain. He didn't even feel the anger that had driven him to this point, he didn't have the energy to hate the people who had gotten him into this situation as he usually did. But their deaths were the only thing keeping him going, the only goal he had left. If he didn't have vengeance in front of him he had nothing and no reason to stay on his feet.

The fall of the Hassaikai, the capture of Overhaul, and the rescue of the child Eri were victories for the heroes, but individual horrors followed each positive. There were deaths and things that couldn't be unseen that day. There was the loss of a quirk for LeMillion. There was a child with more trauma than she may have ever been able to overcome. The young students of UA that had participated were also in the hospital, healing their own wounds. And there was a pro hero in critical condition, taking his last breaths.

But those were just the symptoms.

Bad news continued on and on. A stray Hassaikai had escaped with samples of experimental Quirk-Killer Bullets.

And then there was the equally disturbing report from Shoji.

The teachers at UA's first instincts were to consider the safety of their students. From what Shoji told them, no true conclusion could be derived about Tokoyami and what had become of him, but a crushing weight overtook the school all at once.

"I never imagined I would ever see anything like that," he had told the teachers, "He was a broken version of himself… There was blood on his hands. And when I escaped...I saw Dark Shadow attack him for not killing me. Whatever he's caught up in it's terribly wrong and I don't think he wants to be there."

Fear was predominant among the leaders of UA and they acted first towards protecting their students, but for Shoji only one thing stuck out in it all, one thing that he repeated to his classmates above all else.

Tokoyami was alive and, even if he didn't say it, he was crying for help.


End file.
